Reunion
by SkidInSideways
Summary: House juggles three intriguing cases, a wobbling romance, and the reappearance of an old flame on his way to answering his biggest mystery: What does he really want, anyway?
1. Girls, Girls, Girls

I don't own the television show House, MD. I thought that went without saying, this being a fan fiction site, but apparently not... 

Systemic lupus rarely manifests itself before puberty—and the usual victims are women. It shouldn't even be considered when the patient is a seven-year-old boy. But what else could explain the kidney dysfunction, the fever, and the swollen, achy joints that had plagued this kid since he was admitted almost a week ago? Unless it was something else, some determining factor that everyone was missing—

"—they're leaving for Switzerland next week, so this could be our last chance to see them until April—"

A good look at the patient would help, but this wasn't his case. Which was bad luck for the kid; Ettinger could overlook a hooker in a whorehouse. House was dying to sneak a peek at the files, but Cuddy had warned him for the last time about interfering with other doctors' patients. He'd have to wait until she left for the AHA conference in San Diego, and that was still two weeks away. At the rate the kid was going, he could be underground by then. Unless he bribed one of the night nurses . . . There was one who wore a Stones t-shirt under her uniform, and they were playing Philly next month. The show was sold out, but he knew a guy who knew a guy . . .

"So do you think you'll get off duty on time tonight? _Greg?_"

As if dropped from a flying saucer, House found himself standing in the corridor outside the clinic, peering cluelessly into the face of Dr. Allison Cameron. He experienced a familiar sinking sensation as he understood that he had somehow missed whole minutes' worth of information—vital information, judging from her expression.

His confusion must have been evident; now she looked deeply suspicious. "Did you hear a word I just said?"

There was only one way to handle this: bluff with all your might.

"Of course. Leaving next week, coming back in April. I can't promise a case of Gay Feinmesser Cohen syndrome won't walk through the clinic door in the next two hours, but at this time it's safe to say I will be available at five o'clock." Nicely done; she seemed to be buying it. "So, what's the dress code? Casual or black tie?" Uh oh—he got overconfident and went too far.

Cameron rolled her eyes, considered the merits of losing her temper, decided to be patient instead.

"Greg. Deena and Tim—my best friends from college? the ones I talk about all the time? are going to Gstaad next week. They'll be there for almost _six months_. I talked to Deena last night and we made plans to meet for drinks and dinner."

Before he could stop himself, House emitted a mighty sigh. Deena and Tim were nice people, but fifteen minutes in their presence was pushing it. The thought of an entire evening in their company, listening to them agonize over which SUV to buy, or which gated community offered the best environment for children, or whether they should have children at all, made him understand why a wild animal would gnaw its own leg off to escape a trap.

Cameron stiffened and eyed him dangerously.

"Greg. These are my friends. I want us to spend time with them—"

"Of course," House said placatingly.

"An evening once in awhile isn't that much to ask, and if you'd just relax and try to enjoy yourself—"

"You're right."

"You think everyone who isn't exactly like you is mentally deficient. Deena and Tim aren't geniuses, but they are good people—"

"The best!" House agreed. "Salt of the earth. Men of the soil. Oops—persons of the soil. Not to imply there's anything wrong with their personal hygiene; there isn't. Nope: nice, clean-living, genuine folks."

Silence. Cameron looked at him squarely." You can be such a jerk."

As if that were news to either of them.

House heaved an internal sigh.

"Cam— Allison. I said I would go. Where do you need me to be?"

Unappeased, through tight lips: "The Lion and the Unicorn. Quarter after five. You don't have to dress up; we're only going to Renee's for dinner." She did not say out loud, because by now she did not have to, "And if you could tuck in your shirt, and shave, that would be a good start."

Great. Renee's. A French "bistro," a word that apparently translated roughly to "small portions of sour food at a inversely proportional price."

"Fine. I'll be there." He forced a smile. "And I'll try to do something with my hair, too."

Cameron relaxed little and smiled back. She had a beautiful smile. She touched his hand—she had beautiful hands. She was a beautiful young woman with a personality to match. Why did he sometimes find that so annoying?

She tiptoed to kiss his cheek. "Thank you," she said softly, and turned away.

House watched her go, the smile fading from his own face. He was feeling another wave of the misgivings that had plagued him from the moment he realized his new fellow had a life-threatening crush on him. For his part, attraction had always been mingled with caution. Cameron was a smart and talented doctor, but she didn't have much of a sense of humor—a vital coping tool, House had always felt—and she was not good at dealing with unpleasant facts. Basically, she ignored them. Forcing people to face unpleasant facts was a signal characteristic of Dr. Gregory House, and he had felt from the start that by the time he was finished with her, Dr. Cameron would have lost her innocent belief in the essential goodness of life in a way that she would not enjoy. Her worldview was too fragile, that was a fact, and whenever he was around her, he felt like a three-legged bull in a china shop.

Take this date with her friends. It was not possible for anyone in the party to overlook the fact that he was by far the oldest member—anyone but Cameron, who blithely pretended that it didn't matter. But of course it mattered. He could feel her friends thinking, "Allison could have any man in the tri-state area; what is she doing with this old guy?" They tried to hide it behind a wall of hearty greetings and faux bonhomie, but it slipped out every now and then. "Allison has always had a soft spot for charity cases," Deena had once confided to him, and then looked stricken, as if she'd accidentally disclosed a secret. But House had known all along that in her eyes, he was just the latest beneficiary of Cameron's warm, compassionate heart and weakness for hopeless causes. And it was starting to piss him off.

He had to admit that it had been great at the beginning, when he'd finally decided to trust Wilson and Cuddy's judgment in the matter of Allison Cameron. She was perfect for him, they declared. She actually put up with him—how miraculous was that? He'd never find someone who adored him so unconditionally. It was a year after that disastrous reunion with Stacy, and since he had been the one to break it off this time, he was presumed to be officially over it. Now it was time for him to open up and allow himself to care and be cared for.

Thus it was, that night in his office when, in the middle of a heated argument over taking on a case (he thought the referring physician was an alarmist; she worried that the patient was not going to get adequate care anywhere else), she'd challenged him to kiss her. What the hell, he thought, and did. Ten minutes later they were on their way to his apartment (it was closer than hers), and the night that followed was like three days of rain after a six-year drought; he actually felt himself grow stronger, regain color, reach for the sun. Cameron—Allison—was not exactly a sex kitten, and she wasn't terribly adventurous; her main satisfaction seemed to derive from observing his pleasure. But she did not cringe from the cratered scar in his thigh, she accommodated his physical limitations well, and there was no denying the sheer exhilaration of sharing a bed with a gorgeous, lithe-bodied young woman.

Cuddy and Wilson, having sniffed out the truth at once, were ecstatic; for once, he wallowed in a warm bath of their undiluted approval. That Chase, the pretty rich boy, did not trouble to hide his jealousy was a pleasant bonus. The only jarring note was Foreman, who said nothing, but flicked his eyes away from House's face in a familiar gesture of disapproval.

"I do care for her, you know," House said, wondering why he bothered to campaign for Foreman's imprimatur but wanting it all the same.

"I know you do," said Foreman. "But that's not going to be enough, and you know it." And he got up and left. "Piss off, then," thought House, but the exchange left him uneasy.

At first he brushed the uneasiness aside. Having a devoted girlfriend was doing him good, no doubt about that. He slept better with her beside him—and she stayed almost every night. He gained a little weight—nutrition was a kind of hobby for Cameron, and she could cook some very passable meals. He seemed to be learning how to interact with her without trampling her feelings too badly. He even managed to cut back on the Vicodin. Of course, officially, and as far as Cameron knew, he had stopped altogether. But the goal was progress, not perfection—right? The important thing was that his hidden stash lasted twice as long as it used to.

So when the warning signs began, he tried at first to explain them away. Did it matter so much that he always had to explain his cultural references to her? (Was it reasonable to be impatient when she did not know what "going to eleven" meant, or that she seemed incapable of distinguishing between the Who and Yes?) Was it important that she had little interest in accompanying him to sports events? (And why was he so resentful when her plans for them prevailed over his?) She hated riding his motorcycle; thought he and Wilson sounded like idiots when they started busting each other's balls; and showed every sign of being jealous of Cuddy, to the point where he stopped making cracks about his boss's wardrobe and tried to avoid looking at her at all. So what? (And wasn't it paranoid to suspect that what others saw as unconditional love was actually a kind of willful blindness to some aspects of his personality, and a grim determination to change the rest?)

As the months went by, it became harder to pretend that he was comfortable with all this. Sometimes when she chided him for some gap in his social skills, or teased him in front of the other ducklings, he wondered if his original instinct to keep her at arms' length wasn't justified after all. Did she have any respect for him as her boss anymore? Shouldn't she have some? Her possessiveness made him feel smothered; her tactful tutelage in the fine points of human relations and her gentle determination to turn him into a kindly optimist made him want to run amok downtown, tripping children with his cane and mooning nuns. He felt the old irritation creeping back, and the tendency to lash out verbally returned. Lately the trips to his stash were becoming more frequent.

In short, as lovers they seemed to be inexorably heading toward the moment he'd always dreaded, when his emotions would desert him and he would default to the detached, objective scientist, coolly pinning her character to a wax slab so he could dissect it and point out all the stuff she'd rather not look at. He would never forget the stunned look that drained all the radiance from her face the first time he did that (that cringe-provoking first date, when he had intended to re-establish himself as an unavailable employer and instead launched into an attack on what she probably considered her best qualities), but at least back then he could draw some comfort from the thought that he had spared her worse grief in the long run. He wasn't so sure that would be the case now. It seemed increasingly clear that it would end the way all the others had ended: in pain and disappointment, in some ugly mess of circumstances that would make it necessary for them to move as far apart from each other, physically and emotionally, as possible.

Wilson suddenly hove into his line of sight and stopped, grinning.

"Well, if it isn't Dr. Love," he trilled. "So deep in contemplation of his lady's charms that he forgot to check in on his patient."

House glanced down at the folder in his hand. Right; clinic duty. If he was going to finish up by five, he'd better get to it. He moved toward Exam Room Two.

"Whoa, there, Romeo," Wilson laughed. "Fix your make-up first."

House looked blank. Wilson mimed wiping his cheek. Right—Cameron had left her mark. He mopped at the spot with his sleeve and turned to go.

"Too much pussy," his friend smirked.

"Whipped," muttered House, and entered Exam Room Two.

-0-

He'd forgotten to read the file, so he was absorbed in skimming the particulars as he entered and did not immediately take in the occupants of Exam Room Two: a middle-aged woman, dressed in lightly soiled sweat pants, t-shirt, and denim jacket, and a young girl, bright-eyed and flushed with fever, wearing jeans and one of those cleavage-boosting tank tops they all seemed to favor nowadays.

Fever, sore throat that started two days earlier, pain swallowing; oh yeah, this one was going to test all his diagnostic powers. House suppressed another sigh at the same moment as the older woman vented something between a gasp and a laugh: "_Greg?_"

House looked up sharply, registered her face, and gaped.

"Holy _crap_," he said, and hastily corrected himself: "Uh, wow!"

But Carolyn Barton, _nee_ Campbell, had already turned to the girl—clearly her daughter—and said excitedly, "Angie, this is Greg House, my college boyfriend—you know, the one who went on to be a doctor!"

Given the setting this seemed unnecessary exposition, but the girl seemed too sick to care. She favored House with a weak smile and nod, and resumed staring dully into space. He sympathized: strep throat took a lot out of a person, especially the ones who kept college student hours and a college student diet. House meditated briefly on the debilitating effects of hemolytic Group A streptococci because he was frankly shaken. Five years of monastic existence, and now in the space of one year he'd had visitations from two former lovers and acquired a girlfriend. Five years of nothing at all, and now an embarrassment of women. Was the universe mocking him?

House became aware that both women were looking at him expectantly. He selected a tongue depressor. Belatedly, it occurred to him that when one encountered an old flame, a modicum of small talk was customary before getting down to business.

"Carolyn. It's great to see you. You look—great." She did, too, even in those shapeless sweats. She wore her dark blonde hair much shorter than in her student days, and it was going white at the temples, but her complexion was still clear and only lightly wrinkled, her blue-grey eyes bright, and her figure was as slim as that of the 20-year-old of his memories.

"Not bad for an old dame," she beamed. "How are you? What's the story with the cane—another sports injury?"

House smiled grimly. "I'll tell you all about it sometime," he said. "Now, Angie, sore throat, fatigue, difficulty swallowing—like broken glass in your throat, even when you're eating ice cream?"

Angie nodded miserably.

"Sounds like strep to me," said House, flicking his scope on and raising it to his eye. "Whoa! Classic. But insurance companies don't like educated guesses, so let's swab it to make sure." Deftly, he twirled the cotton-tipped wand across the angry red tissue and escaped to the lab. Watching the technician run the strep quick test, House brooded on the weird coincidences that kept throwing these females in his path.

The memories associated with Carolyn were especially sweet and painful. She was his first real girlfriend, and he had loved her with all the intensity a romantic teenaged boy is capable of mustering. It was inevitable that she also would be the first to break his heart.

They'd met as freshmen at the public college he'd chosen because it was located as far from his parents as it was possible to get while still qualifying for in-state tuition. Under the unremitting prodding of his father, House had skipped fifth grade and graduated high school at 17, so he was a year younger than most of the freshman class. Nevertheless, he was deeply offended when Carolyn earned better grades in the required biology course they both took that first semester. To add insult to injury, she was a non-major and cavalier about her achievement. He rode her mercilessly, challenging everything she said in class, and was furious when Carolyn decided not to take him seriously. She laughed at his most withering sarcasms and teased him for working so hard at his studies. "If you don't smoke weed, start," was her mock-earnest advice. "If you do, smoke some more." No other girl had ever been so little put-off by his arrogance and prickly temperament. By the mid-term exams period he was hopelessly in love.

It never occurred to him that she might return the feeling. But she practically dragged him into a study group for finals, and they spent a lot of time together during the last two weeks of the semester. Under her good-natured influence, House began to relax a little. Carolyn revealed an unguessed-at fondness for loud rock bands; her favorites were the Rolling Stones, the Who, and Genesis; House enthusiastically concurred on the first two and tried hard to convince her that she was misguided about the last. They both liked the Grateful Dead but stopped well short of being Deadheads. They both drank too much coffee and had loud, high-speed arguments about feminism and environmentalism and whether there was any discernible difference between the Republican and Democratic parties.

Finals week arrived, and they both acquitted themselves well. They made plans to celebrate by seeing _The Grateful Dead Movie_ at the student union. But first they met in Carolyn's dorm room to smoke some killer weed that she had scored from her roommate Sue, who had finished her finals early and left that morning.

House had been in Carolyn's room before, but Sue had always been there too. The lights had always stayed on, and the atmosphere was of co-ed insouciance, with lots of dope and jokes about sex but no indication that the twin beds were ever used for anything but lounging on or sleeping in. House took it for granted that the girls viewed him as a cute little brother, nothing more.

Now Carolyn put Pink Floyd's _Meddle_ on her stereo, lit about a hundred small candles, and turned out the lights. "It's a celebration," she explained. "Let's make it special." She shook out her hair, which she had gathered in one fist while handling matches, and smiled wickedly at him. In the candlelight, she looked lovely and mysterious and artlessly seductive. House was suddenly, achingly aware of his feelings for Carolyn, and also of their solitude. Most of the dorm had already cleared out for the semester break; there was little chance that they would be disturbed.

Sitting on her bed, Carolyn tamped a bud of marijuana into the bowl of her maroon plastic bong and lit it, inhaling efficiently and holding the smoke in her lungs as she prepared a hit for him. A pot smoker since 13, House was as proficient as anyone, but in his nervousness he sucked air with smoke and began to cough. Few irritants provoke as spectacular a coughing fit as marijuana smoke, and it was some time before he could stop choking and wheezing. Carolyn fussed over him, bringing him a beer to sip, handing him Kleenex, patting his back.

Coughing fit over, House discovered that he was fantastically high. Carolyn seemed similarly overcome; her patting slowed and she began dreamily to stroke his back. He leaned into her hand and, turning his head, saw that she was gazing at him with a soft, yielding expression. The sense of unreality created by the drug made it possible for him to draw her face toward his. They kissed.

Carolyn drew away and admitted that technically, she was still a virgin. House kissed her palm and admitted that he was, too. They shifted position and lay side by side, their hands running feverishly over each other's bodies, gushing talk between kisses. Was birth control available? It was—no teenage boy in those days left home without a rubber in his wallet. Could they remain friends if they proceeded? Of course. What about the movie?

"I've already seen it," murmured Carolyn.

"I can see it another time," breathed House.

What followed was inept, embarrassing—and supremely thrilling. Twenty-five years later, House still felt a rush of remembered emotion when he thought of that night. It wasn't just the sex (although that had been a big part of it). It was the talk—whispered confessions of longstanding passion, wistful regret over the long weeks of separation ahead, excited plans for the coming semester. They would take more classes together, go into New York to see the new bands, sleep together on the weekends (Sue and House's roommate, Aaron, would just have to go home more often).

Incredibly, it really did turn out that way.


	2. Dinner with Friends

Chapter Two: Dinner with Friends

The businesslike tapping of three-inch heels and a burst of rapid-fire orders signaled the approach of Her Satanic Majesty. If Cuddy caught him lingering outside the lab waiting for mere test results when he could be simultaneously juggling the patients in Exam Rooms Three, Four, and Six, it would provoke a ten-minute harangue that he was in no mood to stand still for right now. House spun on his heel, intending to duck into the lab, just as the technician wheeled around the corner, results in hand. There was a momentary tangle of arms, legs, and cane from which both emerged shaken but intact, with House now in possession of the results. He glanced at the read-out, nodded curtly at Cuddy, who had halted at the nurses station to observe the scuffle, and hurried down the hall to Exam Room Two, like a busy doctor too pressed for time to talk to a colleague.

House had been so sure of the test results that he hadn't really taken them in. He took a second look as he decelerated at the door of the examining room. Then he braked hard and looked again.

From behind the door he heard the murmur of feminine voices: Angie's a croaky growl, comfortably complaining; Carolyn's wearily humorous, defending. As House opened the door, Angie had raised her voice a little in protest: "_Mom_. Stop being so _momly_."

Carolyn shot House a look of mock despair. "Angie says I hover," she explained. "She thinks I'm one of those helicopter parents because I insist that she get decent healthcare."

Accepting this old boyfriend/doctor as judge and jury, Angie presented her case.

"I just called her to see what I should do about this sore throat. I did _not_ want to go to the college health center—they're all idiots. And look at her; she jumps right in the car to _drag_ me here, she doesn't even change out of her crappy gardening clothes—"

"Who's going to see me here?" Carolyn asked reasonably.

"_He_ sees you," retorted Angie, pointing. "Your old boyfriend."

"He's seen me in worse," Carolyn said complacently.

Something told House not to go there. "Why do you think the people at the health center are idiots?" he asked Angie.

"Because they _are_. My _friend_ went there with bron_chi_tis and they told her she was probably bi-_po_lar!"

"Is she bi-polar?" asked Carolyn.

"Who knows?" Angie shrugged. "But she totally had bronchitis."

House seized the opening. "And you totally do not have strep throat," he said.

Angie threw her mother a look of triumph. Carolyn sighed softly.

"But you are sick," House continued, "and if you can pretend to be a good little girl and stop picking on your mother for five minutes, maybe we can figure out what's going on."

He had the girl lie down on the examining table and palpated the glands in her neck as he reread the nurse's exam notes. BP well within normal, lungs clear, heart rate good…and swollen glands, and complained of feeling tired, not much appetite…He had her lift her t-shirt above her midriff and pressed his fingers just under the ribcage, above the spleen. The girl flinched. Bingo.

House was going to tell her to rearrange her shirt and sit up when he noticed a livid bruise just above the waistband of her low-cut jeans.

"Where'd you get that bruise, Angie?" he asked, fingering it lightly. The girl raised her head and peered down her torso as if this were news to her.

"I dunno."

"How long have you had it?"

She shrugged.

"You don't remember getting a bruise like this?" House gave it a delicate poke.

"My roommate goes to bed a lot earlier than me," Angie said, wriggling away from his predatory finger. "I have to undress and get into bed in the dark, and I'm always bumping into things. That's probably where I got it. From the corner of my desk or something."

House could feel light waves of anxiety lapping outward from the corner where Carolyn sat. She caught his eye and spoke in a transparently casual tone. "What are you thinking it might be?"

He decided to go with hearty. "Mononucleosis is the most likely suspect. She's the right age for kissing disease and pretty enough to be at high risk. Why don't we have Angie go right down to the bloodletters and get a Monospot. We could have the results by Friday. Unless you'd rather take her to her own doctor—"

"We're between doctors for Angie right now," said Carolyn. "Her pediatrician just retired last month, and we haven't gotten around to finding a new one yet. It's awkward, because she's really too old for a pediatrician but the practice I go to doesn't take kids until they're 21—"

"I want him to be my doctor," said Angie, pointing at House. He had heard this so seldom in a quarter century of practicing medicine—"Get this son of a bitch out of here" was the customary response to an offer of his services—that House wasn't sure he'd understood her correctly, but Carolyn just smiled.

"Sounds good to me," she said.

Lab order in hand, Angie sashayed out of the room. Carolyn lingered behind, however, and when House tried to escape, she gently blocked his path.

"What blood tests did you order?" she asked.

"Monospot. She probably has mono."

"And—?"

"And what?"

"You may have added half the alphabet to the end of your name since we broke up, but I still kicked your ass in Bio 103. You're talking about a disease of the blood. I'd like to know what else you're looking for."

Lamely: "That's really Angie's business, isn't it? She's my patient."

Carolyn crossed her arms. "Yeah. I know. She's an adult now, and I have no business asking. She's all of 19, for god's sake. She didn't even think to ask you if there was anything else."

House looked around the room for inspiration.

"You wait all your life to have a baby," Carolyn continued, "and you finally get pregnant, and you carry her inside you for almost a year, then it's day after day after day of worrying about her health, her diet, her happiness, her safety. And then suddenly she's 18 and people start saying, 'Hey, good job, thanks for all your hard work, now butt out.' And no one tells you where to find the dial that lets you turn down the caring."

"Carolyn—"

"Greg. You've always been lousy at lying and you haven't gotten any better at it in 25 years. What else are you thinking?"

He met her gaze. "I've asked for a CBC. And—a couple of other things."

Carolyn paled. "Leukemia."

"Carolyn. Don't let's get ahead of ourselves here. Mono is still our best bet."

She ran a shaky hand through her hair. Twice. Then, taking a deep breath:

"Okay. Let's say mono. What then?"

"Rest, mostly. You should take her home—no dorm life for at least a month, maybe more. Rent everything at Blockbuster rated PG and above. Lots of liquids, a soft diet at first, lots of quiet time."

"And if it's not?"

"If it's not what?"

Angie had reappeared in the doorway.

House tried the hearty approach again. "That was quick. I've actually known people who were cured while they were waiting for bloods."

Angie permitted a tired smile and showed them the Elmo Band-Aid on her arm. "They said I was a good bleeder. And I have very cooperative veins."

"They used to say that about your mother, too," House reminisced. "She'd go strutting by the student union in her Frye boots and designer jeans, and all the guys would say "Man, that fox has cooperative veins!"

Angie had draped herself over her mother like a sick puppy but managed a guffaw. Carolyn rolled her eyes.

"Excuse us," she said. "I think someone needs a little momly attention."

-0-

Cuddy was still at the nurses' station when he emerged, but she had her coat on, so maybe she hadn't been lying in wait for him all that time. No, probably not, in fact, because when she looked up from the chart she was scowling at she appeared to be startled.

"Evening, boss!" House boomed. "I've put in my quota; think I'll knock off a little early tonight, get ready for my date. Got any big plans yourself, or are you out of batteries?" His wink would have embarrassed Groucho Marx.

But Cuddy was looking at the clock. "Be my guest," she said. "If you went home this early every night, you might actually get to keep your job."

House followed her gaze: it was almost 5:30. The Lion and the Goddam Unicorn was across the river. Traffic would be nose to ass the whole way.

He hobbled furiously to his office, Angie's chart still in hand, and did a quick spiff. A fresh shirt, yes, but shaving was out. He ran a comb under the faucet in the conference room and flattened his hair, suddenly noticing that he was about two weeks overdue for a trim. House drew a deep breath and looked at himself in the mirror over the sink. The view was even more disappointing than usual.

He limped back to his desk. In a locked drawer, from under a stack of t-shirts and clean underwear (if your job requires the occasional overnighter, ready access to a shower and a change of clothes is essential), he drew a very large prescription bottle, two-thirds full. House shook out two pills and took one. After a moment, he broke the other pill in two, swallowed half, and put the other half back in the bottle.

House sat a moment, considering. Then he shook the half-pill out of the bottle and took that, as well.

It was after six by the time House got to the other side of the river. He had thought of calling Cameron to let her know he'd be late. Unfortunately, the thought didn't occur to him until he was in the car, which was where he discovered that his cell phone battery was dead. Nor could he pull over and call her from a pay phone, because he had never committed her cell number to memory, because he kept it conveniently filed as a speed dial on his cell phone, which was now lying on the floor of the passenger side where he'd thrown it, as useless as a condom made of Kleenex. Didn't someone once say technology was going to make life easier? He couldn't believe he'd fallen for that.

It being a weeknight, he managed to find parking less than a mile from the bar. The pills had kicked in too, alleviating most of the leg pain and a goodly part of his anxiety over being late. In fact, he was in a pleasantly what-the-hell frame of mind by the time he'd made it to the fake pub and realized his party had moved on. It was only about seven when he got to Renee's. Everyone had a few drinks in them by that time, and two out of three of his companions seemed purely overjoyed to see him and more than ready to forgive his tardiness.

Cameron, not so much.

The wait staff was gracious about his last-minute order. Wine had already been brought and poured, but House decided he was in such deep trouble already that a little more couldn't make it much worse, and asked for a double Scotch. He thought it might make him more expansive, but coming on top of the pills it made him introspective instead. He'd told Carolyn the truth: mono was the most likely cause of Angie's illness. A bruise wasn't much to go on. Anyway, leukemia wasn't an automatic death sentence anymore. Ask Wilson, and he'd tell you that nine out of ten kids recovered fully and went on to lead healthy, happy lives that were brutally cut short by something else entirely. Okay, Wilson wouldn't put in that last bit, which is why people thanked him for telling them bad news and threw haymakers at Dr. House.

The food came. He tried to focus on the conversation. Deena was bubbling about her favorite subject: to breed or not to breed. Cameron had a way of egging her on, while casting meaningful glances in House's direction, that made him want to bolt from the room. Sooner or later they were going to have to talk about why this was not ever going to be an option for them.

"The thing is," said Tim, furrowing his bland brow, "how do you know when the time is really right to start a family? I mean, we're both still building our careers. Are we really in a good space, career-wise _and_ relationship-wise, to take on that responsibility?"

"For god's sake, stop overthinking." Was that the slightly slurred pronouncement of the distinguished Dr. House? "Just go home and do it like monkeys, and see what happens." Shut up, House, before you go too far. "If it doesn't work out, blame the nanny." Too late—too far.

Tim forced a chuckle. Deena glanced at Cameron and devoted herself to her veal. Cameron stared into space, and because unlike Angie her glands were not swollen, he could see the muscles in her neck clench and tense.

Cameron continued to stare into space as House, by way of apology, picked up the outsized check and left a similarly outsized tip. She bade her friends goodbye and followed him to his car. Finding his cell phone, she ascertained at once that it was dead and threw it in the backseat. Cameron had taken the bus to work that day in anticipation of a pleasant evening with friends followed by a night of romance at her boyfriend's place, but House suspected her plans had changed at some point over the past four hours—possibly when he failed to show at the pub, maybe as late as that second and very unwise Scotch, but well before they got to the intersection where you turned left to go to her place and right to go to his.

"You can drop me at my place," she said.

It was probably just as well. The thought of the hours of soul-baring talk she would require before she would allow him to go to sleep—with or without sex—was exhausting. House pulled up in front of Cameron's apartment house and turned to her.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"Of course you are." Tight lipped. "You're always sorry. And it never changes anything, and you're always sorry about that, too."

"Cameron—"

"My name is Allison, Greg. Allison. We've been sleeping together for three months—why do you still talk to me like you're my boss?"

Cornered, House turned and struck.

"I _am_ your boss."

A glint of tears. The slam of the car door; swift footsteps up the walk, another door slammed. House sat slumped at the wheel, his brain fried by pills, booze, the late hour, and something that felt uncomfortably like emotion. He shook it all off. It was nearly ten; time for the night staff to come on duty. Ettinger would have gone home hours ago, leaving Lupus Boy (if that was indeed what was wrong with the kid) unguarded.

A quick U-turn, and he was headed back the way he came. At the intersection, instead of going straight toward his own place, he turned right and pressed on toward Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, a plan for suborning the pediatric night nurse already forming as he drove.


	3. Midnight Rambler

Chapter Three: Midnight Rambler

As luck would have it, the pediatric night staff—including the nurse with the Stones fetish—was occupied with a flailer at the opposite end of the hall from Lupus Boy. Even a conspicuously tall figure with a limp and a cane could slip through the confusion, gather up a clipboard and folder, and spend a few quiet moments at the copier without drawing attention. So it was that House was in and out of the hospital before midnight, and could spend the night in his own bed instead of having to break into Wilson's office to sleep on his couch.

But first, like a treat before bedtime, there was the pleasure of reviewing Lupus Boy's records. The effects of the Scotch and pills having worn off hours before, House poured a fresh drink and fished a prescription bottle out of a banker's box marked "Yankees Stats: 1964 to 1985." Two pills would have been overkill—they had a way of disrupting his sleep, and he wanted to be on top of his game the next day—so he virtuously limited himself to one and returned the bottle to its hiding place. Then he settled into his leather recliner, snapped on the reading light, and settled in for a good dose of his favorite kind of mystery.

Systemic lupus is a particularly intriguing villain. Also known as the Great Imitator, it mimics a grab bag of other diseases so convincingly that a diagnosis boiled down to a series of shots in the dark. No one test could definitively confirm it. Lupus develops over time, occasionally producing tantalizing but unrelated symptoms like a serial killer dropping a playing card or rose at the crime scene. It took a patient, observant medical detective to track it to ground, then even more patient experimentation to successfully treat it. Bad luck for this kid that his attending was Ettinger, an amiable burnout who had decided to spend the remainder of his medical career working on his hook shot and coasting toward retirement.

Ordinarily House would respect the prerogatives of a fellow goldbricker, but this case had all the elements he loved: enough data for an educated guess, the prospect of hours of putting together clues and making connections everyone else had overlooked, and, best of all, the need to do it all against the clock and under the radar. Because children are not a primary risk group, the lupus is often not even suspected until the disease has advanced to the point where the organs are threatened. House believed that Lupus Boy was fast approaching that point. Direct intervention was out of the question, at least at first; Cuddy wasn't kidding after that unfortunate episode with Posner's brain tumor patient. House would have to find a way to get the kid treated without actually getting involved himself.

A small thought inserted itself: Lupus is an autoimmune disease. House had an immunologist on his staff, and she had a reputation as a fierce advocate for patients, especially children. She also had the advantage of being almost universally liked. If Cameron somehow got wind of the kid's condition, she wouldn't rest until Cuddy reassigned the case and the full menu of tests had been run. Unfortunately, House's staff immunologist had gone home crying tonight because he had failed in the boyfriend department.

He vaguely remembered being forced to attend a workshop for managers on sexual harassment and workplace relationships. It was three years ago, a time when House could not imagine himself in a romance with anyone, let alone a comely employee, so he spent the day filling out his rotisserie league roster. Now he wished he had paid attention. Was there a policy or procedure that covered simultaneously making up and delivering an order to a subordinate? The handouts distributed at the workshop might have helped, but he had taken his, highlighted all the words and phrases with suggestive double meanings, and mailed them anonymously to Cuddy. He wondered if she still had them, and if there was any way of getting them back without exciting undue interest in his love life.

It was after two when House fell into bed. Incredibly, sleep rolled in like a black wave and swept him up and away before he'd turned over once. His dreams were chaotic, featuring patients whose vital parts melted as he tried to examine them, lab reports in Cyrillic alphabet, and an unrehearsed-for piano recital of unfamiliar music before an audience of faceless, impassive critics. Toward the end of the last dream, as the piano grew long legs and galloped out to sea, he saw Angie Barton gazing at him from the stage wings and heard Carolyn say, so clearly he thought he was awake and she was standing over him, "You were always terrible at lying, Greg. Why don't you just say what everybody already knows and get it over with?"

-0-

Foreman and Chase were nodding over coffee in the conference room when he arrived much later that morning. There was no sign of Cameron. House went straight to his office and peered at his phone. The voice mail light was blinking. He dropped into his chair and punched in the ludicrously complicated code. The message was excruciatingly correct.

"This is Dr. Cameron. I am taking a sick day. I will call later to let you know whether to expect me tomorrow."

House deleted the message, drummed his fingers on his desk, then threw himself back in his chair and tried tapping on his forehead instead. It didn't help, so he raided his stash for a pill and a half and swallowed the pieces while crouched over the drawer with his back to the other room. The damned things were like chalk, and one stuck in his throat, causing him to expel it with a violent cough that brought both men to their feet, eyeing him with mingled concern and apprehension. House jauntily waved, palming the half-a-pill as he did so and popping it into his mouth as he turned to pick up Lupus Boy's folder. He swallowed carefully, thinking wistfully of the days when he didn't have to risk asphyxiation just to get a buzz on.

"Okay!" he barked, striding into the conference room. "Seven-year-old boy presents with persistent fever, protein in the urine, aching joints, serositis, renal dysfunction." House scrawled the words on the white board, then shook back his sleeve to check his watch. "Aaaaaand: GO." He pointed to Foreman, who just looked suspicious.

"This is our patient?" he asked.

"Say for the sake of argument that it is," said House.

"Meningitis?" offered Chase.

"Doesn't explain the kidneys."

"Mononucleosis?"

"Doesn't explain the urine. Now, let's not always see the same hands. Foreman?"

"Say for the sake of argument that this _is_ someone else's patient," Foreman nagged. "Why are we talking about him?"

House gave up. "Because his doctor is an idiot. He thinks the kid has the flu and is just a little dehydrated."

"And you have an opposing theory?"

"Systemic lupus explains it all: the kidneys, the fever, the joints, the milky peepee."

"It's pretty rare in a seven-year-old boy," Foreman observed.

"It's not common," House admitted, "but it's possible. And if I'm right, we need to know now. This thing can kill a kid while the grown-ups stand around with their thumbs up their asses, telling each other how unlikely it is."

"Okay," said Foreman. "So what do we do? He's someone else's patient. We can't even draw blood for an ANA."

"I've thought of that," said House, dropping into a chair and bouncing his cane on its rubber tip.

"And—?"

"I haven't thought that part out yet," he admitted.

"Cameron should be on this case," Chase said helpfully. "Where is she, anyway?"

"Called in sick," said House.

"What's wrong with her?"

Startled, House noted that the Aussie looked genuinely concerned. It occurred to him that concern might be appropriate under the circumstances.

"She left a message. She didn't say."

"Don't you think you should call her and find out?"

"Didn't you go out last night?" Foreman pressed.

"We did."

"Was she feeling sick then?"

"Now that you mention it, she was coughing up blood and growing scales. I thought it might be a reaction to the shellfish. I'll get right on it as soon as you two shift your lazy butts out of here and find me a bloodletter who can be bought. Meeting adjourned."

Foreman cut his eyes at Chase, who leaned back in his chair and examined the corner of the ceiling. As House returned to his office, he heard Foreman murmur "Trouble in the house of love," and a derisive snort from the Australian.

House hobbled to his desk and picked up the telephone receiver. He put it down again and fumbled in his desk for the hospital personnel directory. Finding her number, he dialed all but the last digit; took a deep breath; then completed the call.

Cameron's live voice sounded weaker than it had on voice mail. Maybe she really was sick. The thought softened his own voice.

"I hope I didn't wake you," he said.

"I was dozing. Not really asleep anymore."

"Are you all right? What happened?"

"I'm not sure." Pause. "I had a lot to drink."

"I didn't notice," House lied.

"You weren't there for most of it."

"Cam—Allison. I'm a doctor, not a bond salesman. People don't stop getting sick at 5 o'clock so I can be on time for dinner."

"Like that ever stopped you before." There were tears in her voice now. "You always managed to make it to OTB for post time."

House ran a weary hand through his hair. "This was a little different," he acknowledged. "The patient's the daughter of an old friend."

"A friend?" There was an unflattering note of surprise in her voice.

"Yeah, an old college—uh—buddy. The kid's got mono, or maybe something worse."

Right on cue, the fax machine clattered to life. Rising, House could make out the first line of the print-out: Angela Barton. Angie's blood test results.

Cameron gentled her voice. "I'm sorry. But god, Greg, just a phone call to let me know you were going to be late, anything but leaving me there feeling like an idiot …Are you there?"

House had been trying to read the lab report upside down, not liking what he saw. Now he lunged to catch the page as the machine spat it floorward. The results weren't any better right-side up.

"Greg?" The edge had returned to Cameron's voice.

"Yeah, I'm here. The kid's results just came in."

"Oh?" Distinctly chilly now.

"It's worse. Look, I have to go. Call me if you need anything." House hung up and sat motionless for a moment. Then he seized his cane, stumped through the sliding glass doors, and gingerly vaulted the brick wall that separated his balcony from Wilson's.


	4. Shoot the Messenger

Chapter Four: Shoot the Messenger

Wilson was doing charts, or reports, or some damned thing, and was therefore eminently interruptable. House did not hesitate to do so. He bellied up to his friend's desk and dropped Angie Barton's file on top of the oncologist's paperwork.

"Thank you," Wilson said politely. "It really was getting a little too productive in here."

House was unsympathetic. "If you wanted to be a desk jockey, you should have gone into the insurance racket."

"I should have gone into it anyway," Wilson sighed, setting aside his own papers and picking up Angie's file. "There's a lot of money to be made in healthcare, and they're the ones who seem to be getting most of it."

He read silently for a moment, then looked up, puzzled.

"This came in through the clinic? Looks pretty straightforward to me. Do you want a referral?"

"I want you to look at her."

Wilson closed the file and regarded House with suspicion. "Okay, wait. It's all coming back to me now. Cuddy said you were closeted with one patient for about 45 minutes yesterday. You even left late. Who am I looking at here?"

House evaded his eyes. "Daughter of a friend."

Wilson did a double take. "A friend?"

"Why does everyone say it like that?" House asked irritably. "I did have a life before the big double P."

Wilson was rereading Angie's history. "Sooooo, this Scott Barton—undergrad drinking buddy? Lacrosse teammate? Shared a jail cell?"

House gave up. "The friend is Carolyn Barton, and because I know you won't rest until I tell you, yes, she was a friend with benefits."

The joy of gossip shone in Wilson's brown eyes. "When?"

"Freshman through junior year."

"'She was my fiiirst love'," Wilson sang.

"You know, your interest in other people's love lives is really unseemly."

"Give me a break, House. If we were discussing anyone else, you'd be dishing at warp speed right now."

"Don't change the subject," said House. "Will you see the kid or not?"

Wilson consulted the calendar installed on his computer. "Next Thursday at 2:30?"

"Sooner."

"I might be able to open up a space on Tuesday…"

"Tomorrow."

"Not a chance!"

"Wilson. She's Carolyn's only child. Would you want to wait a week to see a specialist if it were your kid?"

Wilson shot another speculative look at House. "Is she your kid?"

"Do the math, lamebrain."

"It must feel weird to know your old girlfriend's got a kid in college," Wilson jabbed back. "You must feel really old."

"I hadn't even thought about it," said House, rising stiffly, "but thanks for mentioning it." He leaned heavily on his cane like a pathetic old man and looked appealingly at Wilson, who groaned and looked at his calendar.

"Who needs nourishment anyway?" he asked his computer screen. "Tomorrow at noon, then. Do I have to see you, too?"

"Wild horses couldn't drag me away," said House, and blew Wilson a kiss as he left.

In the corridor he almost literally ran into Foreman, who did a neat dance turn to avoid the collision before falling into step beside him. House glanced at his fellow, noted that he looked like he'd just left Shakira, sated and in love, in a tangle of silk sheets.

"Kevin Mahoney is scheduled for an ANA," Foreman said casually.

"Who's Kevin Mahoney?"

"Lupus Boy? Ettinger's latest victim?"

House grunted and led the way into his office, where he grabbed his jacket, then to the elevator.

"'That's incredible, Foreman!'" the neurologist mimicked enthusiastically, as they rode to the ground floor. "'Tell me, however did you do it?' I bought Ettinger coffee and told him that 'someone' had mentioned a kid on the ward who was giving him a hard time. I was sympathetic and let him complain for half an hour. Then I asked a lot of leading questions until he figured it out for himself. Diplomacy," Foreman summarized. "It's a beautiful thing."

"A positive ANA isn't conclusive," House reminded him, barreling out of the elevator, scattering visitors waiting in the hallway.

"We talked about follow-up. He seems happy to have someone to tell his troubles to, so I guess I'm consulting. You're welcome!"

This last was shouted at the back of House's head as he accelerated past the clinic doors and through the lobby. Foreman halted and watched, amused and annoyed, as his boss sailed through the automatic doors and headed toward the parking lot.

The Barton residence was located in a rural area about fifteen miles west of the city, or a half-hour drive in moderate traffic at the posted speed limit. House regarded speed limits as another reason to question authority and traffic as an obstacle course, so he made the trip in just over 15 minutes. The house was located across the road from a horse farm. White wooden fences enclosed pastures full of contented-looking beasts rummaging around the pale spring turf for the first blades of grass. Two yellow barns stood off to one side. In the riding ring, a woman in a tennis visor was shouting instructions to a little girl on plump grey pony.

Carolyn's place was a small green farmhouse with white trim and shutters and a broad front porch. It looked well-kept in a low-key, comfortable way: the bushes and flowerbeds looked neat and the lawn was cut, but the landscaping lacked that razor-sharp, veneered look so popular in the suburbs. House parked next to a green late-model pickup truck and got out. As if activated by the sound of his car door closing, a dog began to bark. Following the sound to a side entrance near the driveway, House saw an overstimulated German Shorthair Pointer flinging itself repeatedly at the storm door. After a beat Carolyn appeared behind the mutt. A brief struggle ensued, then she emerged victorious, one end of a web leash in her hand, the other straining at the dog's collar.

"She won't hurt you!" Carolyn yelled, but House had heard that one before and stood aside warily while Carolyn hustled the dog past him to a fenced yard. Inside, she loosed the animal and slammed the gate just as it lunged forward. The dog engaged in a series of leaps, still barking its fool head off each time its head appeared over the top of the fence. Then it abruptly tired of the game and trotted off to pee in the bushes.

Carolyn pushed her hair back from her face. "Well! Nice to know we're safe from marauding doctors, anyway," she said breezily. "Come on in. I'll make coffee."

House said nothing as Carolyn fussed around the kitchen, filling the coffeemaker, getting out cookies, chatting gaily. Angie was sleeping round the clock. She didn't seem very hungry but did manage to choke down a pint of Ben and Jerry's Phish Phood between breakfast and dinner. Her boyfriend brought over a bouquet of balloons last night, and that seemed to raise her spirits.

Coffee mugs in hand, Carolyn sank into a chair and finally looked him in the face. Her smile slipped away. "Oh my god. It's bad news, isn't it?"

House watched his old friend age ten years as he delivered the speech he'd been rehearsing since Princeton. Leukemia was serious, yes, but far from a death sentence. Angie was young and had an otherwise good health history—no previous cancers or treatments for other diseases that might weaken her defenses. Further testing was needed to determine whether she had acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) or acute myelogenous leukemia (AML), but he'd bet money Angie had ALL, and in any case the treatment was about the same and the recovery rates for both were comparable. One of the best oncologists in the tri-state area was a close personal friend and had cleared his calendar to see them tomorrow.

Carolyn, who did not seem to find it at all remarkable that House had a friend, stuck to the business at hand. "So AML is more dangerous than ALL?"

This momly ability to zero in on the one weak spot in your story—was it the result of a hormonal change during childbirth? House made what he hoped was a reassuring gesture. "For someone like Angie, it's really not an issue. She'd have excellent chances for remission either way."

Silence while Carolyn processed this news. A calico cat drifted into the kitchen and, sensing a visitor with allergies, curled itself senuously around House's leg. He longed to punt it across the room but guessed that now was not the time. He counted the seconds to see how long it would take before the sneezing started. After more than a minute—a personal best—he spoke.

"I think we should talk to Angie, don't you?"

Carolyn nodded and rose. "She's in her room. Asleep, probably. I'll get her."

Alone at last, House cased the kitchen. Like the exterior of Carolyn's house, it was well-kept but unremarkable, done in yellows and greens with good but not premium quality appliances. Oddly, there was no sign of any male presence—no big clunky boots by the side entrance, no outsized barn coat or gimme cap hanging on the hooks near the door, no set of keys tossed into the fruit bowl on the table. If Scott Barton was still in the picture, he was much tidier than House remembered.

Carolyn reappeared, a sleep-stunned Angie in tow. The girl, now clad in t-shirt and pajama bottoms, shambled to the table and flopped into a chair. House tried not to notice that she wasn't wearing a bra, or that she was better endowed than her mother ever was.

"Mom says you have my test results," Angie croaked. "It's not mono, is it?"

House was already sick of his lecture, but managed to get through it a second time. In this version he skipped the distinction between ALL and AML. Angie looked befuddled enough as it was.

"So I have—cancer?"

"I'm afraid so," said House.

"So, like…so I'll need, like, chemo?"

"Probably. Dr. Wilson will go over all that with you once he's run a few more tests."

Angie stared at the table in front of her. She tried a laugh.

"I can't think of any good questions," she pleaded, looking at one adult, then the other. "The only ones I can think of are so stupid."

"There are no stupid questions," intoned House, belying a lifelong conviction that most questions were not only stupid but ridiculously beside the point.

"Okay." Angie drew a deep breath. "So…what about college?"

"You'll need to take a leave of absence while you're undergoing treatment. But you can pick it right up again once you're in remission. Lots of kids do."

Carolyn took her daughter's hand. "Angie, what do you really want to ask?"

The girl's eyes grew bright with tears. "Am I gonna lose my hair?" She forced another laugh, but it came out as a sob. "I'm sorry, that's so shallow, but it's all I can think of. Am I going to be bald?"

Instinctively, House touched the thinning spot on his own scalp. "I don't think it's shallow at all," he lied. "It's a pretty severe change. But you'll have to ask Wilson. He knows the most up-to-date stuff; maybe they've found a way around it since I last read up on it."

"If you do go lose your hair, I'll shave my head," Carolyn said, squeezing Angie's hand. "Solidarity among bald babes, right?"

"God, Mom, don't," Angie protested. "You have a head like a potato, it'd be really too weird." But when she laughed this time, it was almost natural.

House drove home in a state of profound depression. He'd lingered in that bright pretty kitchen, almost enjoying the scene as the two women joked and encouraged each other and otherwise armed themselves for the long fight ahead. The afternoon slipped by; Carolyn made dinner, and Angie and House discovered that they both loved Tim Burton movies and thought Michael Moore was a blowhard but said things that needed saying. Scott Barton did not appear, and his name did not come up in conversation. The overall atmosphere was determinedly cheerful.

But when Angie went back to her room ("Time for _Drawn Together_ on the Comedy Channel," she explained), Carolyn sat drawn and tense, holding herself together until they heard Angie's door close. Then she cradled her head in her arms and wept soundlessly. House had never seen anyone cry that hard without barking like a dog. Carolyn had never repressed her emotions: she laughed and cried at the smallest provocation, got angry and forgave with equal ease. But this was different: a raw red grief unmitigated by reason and devoid of self-pity, which somehow made it more frightening to witness. House hitched his chair next to Carolyn's and put an awkward arm around her shoulders.

The storm was passing. The shaking stopped; the breathing became more regular. Carolyn leaned back and drew a Kleenex box close. "What a mess," she whispered. "Well, at least that part is over."

"Anything I can do to help," House began, not sure what more he had to offer but not wanting to just fade back into the background, either.

Carolyn slid an arm around his waist and rested her head for a moment against his shoulder. "I can't believe how lucky we were to find you," she said, giving him a quick squeeze. "I am so glad you're here. That's a huge help, right there."

House couldn't begin to identify the feelings aroused by that remark, let alone make sense of them.

He made a quick stop at the hospital to pick up his knapsack, then lingered to hack into the lab's server to make sure Lupus Boy was on track for the ANA the next morning. It was after eleven when he entered his apartment to discover that it was already occupied; Cameron's coat was hanging by the door, and her boots slouched provocatively next to the couch.


	5. Love and Loss

One of those twenty-dollar pillar candles was guttering on the cluttered bedstand, and by its dimming glow and the light from the hall he could see his employee and consort curled seductively amid the pillows on his bed, clad only in an artfully draped sheet. She raised her head and proffered a sleepy smile.

"I was beginning to worry," she murmured.

Standing in the doorway, House considered and rejected a number of possible responses:

Cameron, I am honored to have won your affection, but my mind is heavy with grief over the problems of other people, and I don't have the heart to abandon myself to love just now.

Cameron, I appreciate the offer of the gift of your body, but the little planet that could has run another lap around the sun, and at 47, I have neither the juice nor the jazz of a man your age. Once a week is nice, twice a week is better, but three times is pushing it, and I'm not sure my body can take the addition of a little blue pill to the cocktail of chemicals it already processes every day.

Cameron, I find you very attractive—will you believe me if I tell you that, even if I add that I would really rather be alone tonight? Or, given the way last night turned out, would that be the end?

"Why are you just standing there?" said Cameron.

House managed to purify his tone of irony, unintended or otherwise. "I'm marvelling at my incredible luck."

Cameron sank back into the pillows with a smoky smile. She patted the mattress next to her.

"Come get lucky, then."

Faced with an emotional quandry that did not lend itself to simple solutions, House fell back on thirty years of training as a scientist; he mentally stepped back and appraised the situation in light of cold and objective facts. There was an attractive, naked woman in his bed, broadcasting an invitation that he had no legal, moral, or ethical reason to refuse. Anyway, the consequences of refusing were too exhausting to contemplate—at the very least, there would be an all-night discussion about the future of their relationship, almost certainy involving tears. And so, slamming the door shut on all the other thoughts clamoring for his attention, he stepped forward, unbuttoning his shirt.

Compartmentalization is widely regarded in the psychiatric field as a maladaptive coping strategy, but it had always worked for Gregory House.

-0-

Afterward, having acquitted himself rather well, House permitted himself a moment of pleased self-regard, which Cameron cut short by whispering, "What are you thinking about?" And damn his slippery subconscious, the first thing that leapt to mind was his college roommate's encomium to sex: "When it's good, it is very, very good, and when it is bad it is still pretty good." Sensing this was not the time to share such memories, House parried, "Tell me what you're thinking about first."

Good call; she'd had all day to think. Cameron nestled closer, toying with the hair on his chest. "I'm thinking there's no reason for us to fight," she breathed. "We're both professionals, we know what each other can run into on a day to day basis, it's really just a question of adjusting expectations and making little changes, you know, in priorities and things."

She raised herself on one elbow and, watching his face carefully, continued: "For example, I went in today and no one had seen you since before lunch. If anyone knows how wrapped up in things you get, it's me, so I wasn't even really surprised when Wilson said you were worried about an old college friend whose daughter might have ALL. Was that where you went?"

Nicely done—interogation under the guise of professional interest.

Not, that's not fair, Cameron really did care about patients.

"Yeah, there was nothing much going on and I didn't want to just call. They seemed to appreciate it."

"It must have been hard for them to hear," Cameron mused.

House glanced at her quickly. Had Wilson divulged the exact nature of his friendship with Carolyn? "Yeah, there were tears."

"I think it's wonderful that you decided to go out there to talk to them personally. You really are a softie underneath it all, aren't you?" She poked him playfully. "I can't imagine what you were like in college."

House grimaced. "Obnoxious. Sarcastic. An egotistical, insufferable know-it-all. Thank god I outgrew all that."

Cameron laughed and settled back on the pillows. "You're mellowing out very nicely," she murmured. "Someday you might even make some lucky girl very happy."

House stared at the ceiling and said nothing. His leg was beginning to hurt.

Cameron drowsily parted with one last thought: "Oh, Greg, you're not so bad, really."

"Let's hope not," he muttered, but she was asleep.

Wakefulness seemed to have claimed House as thoroughly as sleep had overcome his bedmate. The pain in his right leg, which had started with a few bad warning stabs, now settled into a steady rhythmic twisting sensation, the ache spreading from the epicenter into the muscles of his thigh like ripples in a pond. He could feel the hard knobs of Cameron's knees and hip bones digging into his other leg. The rumor around the hospital was that she was bulimic. House had now spent enough private time with her to confidently refute that theory. Cameron simply didn't eat. Or rather, she had always just eaten. Or she was going to eat as soon as she finished this task or that. When she made a meal for him, she was always so full from tasting the food while it cooked that she had no room left at the table. When they went out to dine, she nibbled around the edges of her entrée and asked to have the rest packed to go. Those white foam containers never seemed to make it home, though; and when he asked about them, it always seemed she had left them unrefrigerated too long and feared food poisoning. Although she never mentioned it, he noticed that she weighed herself after her shower every morning—the bathroom scale always had damp footprints on it after she'd been in there—and while some days he might actually catch sight of her sipping gently at a spoonful of yogurt, other days the readout must have been unacceptable and she really cracked down. On those days she appeared to live on unsweetened herbal tea. All this in a woman who looked fragile enough to break in half in a stiff breeze.

Not for the first time, House questioned the wisdom of getting involved with someone who might be even more fucked up than he was.

He allowed himself to think of Stacy, who loved food, who stole off his plate and always had room for dessert. Stacy was padded all around with lovely well-toned flesh, was proud of her full breasts and hips and thighs, and never even owned a scale that he knew of. It was wrong to compare Cameron to Stacy, of course—especially since he had forbidden Cameron to make comparisons herself. ("But if you don't look at what went wrong with Stacy, you'll just keep making the mistakes!" "If I knew what went wrong with Stacy, I'd be with her right now." That was the first time an evening together had ended in tears, and the topic hadn't come up since.) Still, just for that moment House remembered a time when going out to dinner meant actually sharing a meal.

He gave up the thought of sleep, pulled on a shirt and pajama bottoms, and hitched into the living to raid the Yankee Stats box. Nothing less than two pills would do it tonight—his leg was on fire. In theory, of course, he was now successfully treating his pain with acupuncture and amitriptyline, an old-style antidepressant that was supposed to be effective for neuropathic pain. But the antidepressant took too long to kick in—three weeks before he could expect any noticeable improvement—and he had yet to make an appointment with the acupuncturist.

Easing himself into his recliner, House turned on the TV with the volume muted and watched a motocross race on the Speed Channel. Onscreen, the riders tore soundlessly around a dirt track, topping the same hills over and over. The repetitive motion was soothing and as the pills kicked in, the thoughts crowding his head faded and he began to relax.

Cameron was right: If he could figure out where he went wrong with the women in his life, he might be able to avoid making the same mistakes and find, if not perfect happiness, at least some measure of contentment with another person. There weren't even that many case histories to review; Carolyn and Stacy represented the sum total of his experience with longterm relationships. One night of insomnia should be more than enough time to arrive at an insight.

The motocross arena gave way to a desert scene: A young man stood before a towering butte, vibrating with manly determination. House groaned. This was his least favorite commercial.

The young man began to climb at what appeared to be a 90-degree angle. At one point, as the cliff wall actually arced outward, the kid dangled by a one hand, straining mightily.

"Come on Greg, you can do better that than! You're not even trying, son!"

By dint of sheer will, the kid in the commercial got a grip on the rock.

"You'll never make the team if you don't put some pepper on it! Bear down, boy!"

The kid's grimy face rose over the rim of the butte.

"It's just a little rain, for crying out loud! Come on, three more miles till bivouac, put your back into it!"

The kid in the commercial took his rightful place with the other steely-eyed, iron-jawed select: the few, the proud, the princely warriors who gave no quarter, whether the foe was a deadly enemy or a ten-year-old son who couldn't or wouldn't learn how to make square corners with his bedsheets.

"For Christ's sake, Greg, you call this bed made? Get in here and do it right!"

Even if you managed to do something right, though, somehow it always could have been just a little better.

"Good shot, Greg! But next time try to close that eye without moving your face. And don't jerk the trigger, squeeze it. Let me show you…"

And through it all—through the childhood years when he could not get the kid to do his homework or help with the dishes, through the teen years of marijuana busts at school and teacher conferences in which young Greg's record of underachievement was always the topic du jour, through the missed application deadlines at the military academies and the punk rock affectations, the Marine pilot who had flown dozens of combat missions in Viet Nam and shaped countless young jarheads into lean, dedicated fighting machines made it increasingly clear that he was losing hope of ever turning his own son into even a passable semblance of a man.

He also made it clear that he was not impressed with his son's taste or judgement. The bicycle young Greg craved was of poor quality; the car he wanted to buy was a piece of junk; the instrument he chose to play and the music he showed a talent for playing were fine for a girl, but… And while it was all well and good to have a select few subjects to excel in, did they have to be math and science, the domain of dorks and nerds?

House plunged grimly ahead, insisting on the bike, buying the car, playing classical piano and, when he felt the need to take the class valedictorian down a few notches, winning the math andscience awards. But his triumphs had a way of losing their shine almost as soon as he scored them. Under his father's eyes, they became the poor, shabby things Major House said they were, and before long House could barely stand to look at them himself. The bike and car rotted in the garage, the trophies were lost in the basement, and the piano was something he played only for himself, late at night, when no one else could hear. By the time he left for college, House had learned not to expose anything of value to his father's assessing gaze.

In fact, it was the end of his sophomore year before his parents even learned of Carolyn's existence. And they learned about her the old-fashioned way: with a surprise visit to his dorm room on a Friday night, when he and Carolyn were celebrating his roommate's decision to go home for the weekend by splitting a six pack and wrestling on the floor in lieu of foreplay.

It was a cordial introduction, once the initial shock wore off, but House kept a wary eye on The Major as he shook Carolyn's hand and insisted, in a booming voice, on treating everyone to dinner. He quick-marched them into the neighboring collegetown and settled them into a pizza place, where he took command of provisions. And he encouraged Carolyn to talk. She happily obliged, thinking she was making a wonderful impression. House wasn't so sure.

His parents had hoped to persuade House to come home for summer break and work for a friend of The Major's. House wanted to stay in town and work in the labs taking care of the research animals, as he had done the previous summer. He and Carolyn had already arranged to sublet the apartment they'd shared the year before, a detail he did not share with his parents.

His father was dumbfounded. "You'd rather sweep up rat shit than make real money at the docks?"

"Well, now that you mention it…" House began, but his mother intervened.

"John, Greg has already made his plans for the summer. We'll just have to do without him."

The Major turned on her. "Blythe, we agreed on the way up here—"

"Dear, I know, but I hadn't realized that he'd already made a commitment."

Carolyn looked from one parent to the other, then cut her eyes at House.

"It's not just cleaning cages," she said loyally. "The professors there really like Greg. They even let him assist in two experiments last year, and this year he might get to do a project of his own!"

"That sounds wonderful!" enthused Blythe, laying a gentle restraining hand on The Major's hand. "I'm just going to have to get used to how grown-up my boy is now."

The Major kept his peace for the rest of the visit. He said nothing when House decided not to come home at all that summer. He didn't protest when his son chose to spend Thanksgiving with Carolyn's family. But when House finally returned for Christmas break, he was ready.

They were sitting together in the living room on New Year's Day, watching football while Blythe made dinner. The Major had been unusually deferential, welcoming his son home with real warmth and listening respectfully to his plans for the coming semester and his senior year, when his energies would be concentrated on applying to medical schools. The atmosphere was so congenial that House was a little unsettled. Was it possible he had finally achieved sufficient gravitas in his father's estimation to be treated like an equal?

The Major spoke. The shock of what he said was so great that House couldn't take it in at first. The upshot was this: Greg was still very young. He had his whole life ahead of him, and the next years were critical to his success. The Major remembered what it was like to be in love for the first time, but surely Greg realized that Carolyn was just that—a first love, a beginning. The Major hoped Greg wasn't getting too serious about her, because he'd seen what happened when two young people rushed into a longterm commitment, and it wasn't pretty. Carolyn in particular had demonstrated a lack of aptitude for the job of medical student's wife. What was this so-called academic major she was pursuing: Planned Studies, combining a concentration in film theory and production with something called "clit lit"? What sort of job could she possibly secure with a background of pure frivolity? Greg was heading down a slippery path. If he didn't watch out, in five years he'd find himself with two kids and an unemployable wife, washing out of med school to support them all.

"And anyway," The Major concluded heartily, "you don't want to get tied down with the first piece of tail you score, son! This is a chance for you to get out more, meet some new girls, sow your oats! Carolyn will understand—hell, she'll probably enjoy getting out and around a little herself, she looks like the type who likes to have a good time."

Now The Major leaned in for the coup. He had been happy to pay House's way through his undergraduate years, but that had to be the extent of it; he had to think of saving for retirement. After next year, House was on his own. Those summers spent cleaning rat cages: had he saved enough money for the expenses ahead of him? No, of course not. So this summer would be spent at the docks, cleaning warships for The Major's old friend—take it or leave it. If he accepted, The Major would write the checks for his senior year. If not, House was on his own as of May.

In the movie _Love Story_, which Carolyn had dragged him to see in their freshman year, it was at this point that spoiled rich-boy Oliver Barrett told his domineering father to go to hell. Greg House, who had less than a hundred dollars in the bank and a driving passion—no, an ungainsayable need—to become a doctor, lowered his head so his father would not see the hatred in his eyes, and agreed to spend the summer in the shipyard.

Was it fear of forfeiting his professional dreams, or his father's harsh assessment of Carolyn that set the stage for their breakup? When they reunited after Christmas break, he suddenly noticed that Carolyn really wasn't very serious about her studies. She made good grades, but her classes didn't seem to add up to anything—she seemed to chose whatever appealed to her, without any apparent strategy for the future. When he drew this to her attention, she laughed and said she was planning to get an MRS. Degree, and although he knew she was joking, it was a chilling thought nonetheless.

He began to notice other things. Carolyn liked to flirt with other boys, and they enjoyed flirting with her. House had always found this indirectly flattering—who wanted a girlfriend no one else wanted?—but now he began to question her ability to remain faithful. Little fissures began to appear in the smooth surface of their relationship.

Fearing a decisive break, he put off telling her about the shipyard job until the end of the year, by which time Carolyn had already arranged the sublet.

They fought. They had fought before, but it was minor squabbling compared to this. By the time they'd finished getting everything out on the table, they could barely look at each other.

"You know I have to start saving for med school," House said sullenly. "You know I can't do that making $5 an hour cleaning cages."

"I know," said Carolyn, looking at her hands. "You should go. You should do this. It's just—I'm going to miss you, is all."

"Yeah, well, about that." House writhed a little in his chair and looked at a point just off her left shoulder. "I think we should be, you know, free to see other people. I mean, if some great guy comes along, and you want to jump him, go ahead. I mean, I don't plan to be a monk all summer. If an opportunity comes along, I'll take it. You should, too."

He glanced at her face and stumbled to a stop. Carolyn looked worse than hurt, she looked like he'd struck her. Oh, great, now I've made her cry, he thought, but she didn't cry. Through white lips, she merely said, "Okay, Greg. If that's what you want, that's what we'll do."

The final week of college was a miserable, sleep-deprived stretch of hell. House labored to make it up to Carolyn without having to admit wrongdoing; he brought her midnight snacks, rubbed her shoulders, told her stupid jokes. Because she laughed at them, he thought he'd succeeded. They made plans for him to visit her on the Fourth of July weekend. They parted.

"I love you," he coaxed.

She smiled and kissed him.

"See you on the Fourth," she whispered, and stood waving as he drove away.

As it turned out, life in the shipyard didn't leave much time for birddogging girls. "I've heard about you your whole life," said The Major's friend. "You're getting good pay for doing a real man's work, and I'm gonna take it out of your hide. No goldbricking here, House, and no smart-assed backtalk, either. You come in at dawn and leave when it's dark, and don't let me catch you sitting down in between."

House nodded, wondering if there would ever come a time when he would be addressed as just another human being instead of a juvenile deliquency problem to be solved with iron discipline.

The work was boring, harsh, exhausting. House dragged himself home each night, too tired to call Carolyn, too shaky to write, and slept like a dead thing until the alarm summoned him back to the pits. But he was making good money at last, and because he was too wrung out to even contemplate seeing a movie, he saved every cent of it. Now his energies were focused on the Fourth, when he planned to redeem himself with Carolyn in an orgy of spending.

Yet, when his mother called him to the phone a week before Independence Day, he knew before he picked up the receiver that there would be no holiday reunion after all.

"Who is he?" House said through his teeth, trying to control the shaking.

"Scott," Carolyn whispered. "Greg, I am so sorry—"

"Yeah," said House. "Well, good. See you in September." And he hung up the phone.


	6. The 3 am of the Soul

For humanitarian reasons, fast-forward through the dismal year that followed. Delete entirely the scenes from House's return to campus that fall, and his initial attempts to win Carolyn back. At first she was kind but firm; then stern and firm; then firm and threatening the call the police—although to be fair, she only reached the last stage the night he climbed through her bedroom window. After that he made one last drunken phonecall, which Scott Barton took on Carolyn's behalf.

"House. Give it up. Carolyn is with me now."

Since Barton could summon the full force of Delta Kappa fraternity to back him up, that was that.

Denied access to Carolyn, too demoralized to seek love elsewhere, House applied himself to his studies with demonic intensity. He harangued not one, but two professors into sponsoring research projects, one of which paid off handsomely in the form of a paper that, as second author, he presented at a prestigious conference. Medical schools showed real enthusiasm for his applications. Fellowship offers arrived. If he played his cards right, he could get through the next four years with only minimal debt. The irony of his improved financial prospects did not, unfortunately, escape him.

He almost never saw Carolyn that year, but his antennae were so acutely tuned to her presence on campus that he could not have filtered out news of her comings and goings if he had wanted to.

Scott Barton moved in a different world; he was widely liked, the original good guy, full of back-slapping enthusiasm. He was short and shallow, but Carolyn didn't seem to mind. She accompanied him to sports events, tolerated the weekend frat parties, dressed to the nines and went to formals with him. She seemed perfectly happy.

It was study week before final exams when House got wind of a possible rift between Carolyn and Scott. There'd been a confrontation over Scott's behavior at one of those beer-soaked orgies at the DK house—she'd caught him standing on the porch with his brothers howling "Show us your tits!" to passing females. Apparently this was not a first offense. When House finally saw her face to face, she was hunkered down in a carrel in the library, brow furrowed with concentration or, possibly, disgust over her piggish beau.

House sat down and apologized for his behavior at the start of the year. Carolyn apologized for the way Scott had spoken to him. They both apologized for the way the previous summer had turned out. Talk turned to their post-graduation plans; Carolyn had been accepted into a feminist studies program at the University of Pennsylvania. Trying not to brag, House allowed that he had made it into medical school. Carolyn was overjoyed for him. Encouraged, House ventured a question about the situation with Scott.

"I don't know," Carolyn said irritably. "What am I doing with him? He can be such a jerk sometimes." She looked into the middle distance, stretching her eyes a little, and whispered, "And sometimes I just miss you so much."

He turned her face towards his. From force of old habit, they touched lips. And suddenly it was as if the entire miserable year had never happened. Hearts pounding, hands swarming, breathless kisses—they stood, unwilling to let each other go, and made their clumsy way to the farthest depths of the stacks where they sank to the floor. Carolyn disengaged herself just long enough to hitch up her skirt and remove her underthings. And House poured all the desperate, romantic, sensual longings a 21-year-old boy is capable of into the next sweet, hot moments, aware only that his heat was being answered in a way he had dreamed of since June.

It was over. House sprawled, mind blessedly empty, waiting for the strength to speak. He raised his head and looked into Carolyn's eyes. All the right words came to him: "I love you. I need you. Come back to me."

And then, like a whiff of sewage at a garden party, came The Major's words: "She looks like the kind of girl who likes to have a good time."

What was she doing on the library floor, at midnight, with a man who was not her boyfriend?

Carolyn stroked his face, her own expression open and waiting.

"Well," said House. "I'd better be going. Say hi to Scott for me,okay?"

With a violent shove, Carolyn freed herself, scrambled to her feet, and strode to her carrel. House followed her just in time to see her snatch up her books and leave. He could not possibly have told you what he was thinking.

A week later, he saw her again. The graduation ceremony had just ended, and his father had posed him with his mother for a photo.

"I want to remember this moment the next time you pull some bone-headed stunt," The Major joked.

Looking out over the sea of heads, House spotted Carolyn, her arm around Scott, surrounded by her large, boisterous family and a couple who must be Scott's parents. Everyone looked very jolly and ready to continue celebrating. Just as The Major snapped his photo, Carolyn looked up and caught House gazing at her. Her face hardened; she gave him the finger and turned away.

The photo of House and his mother wound up in a frame on the mantlepiece. Everyone who saw it remarked that Greg looked very nice and grown-up, but terribly sad for a young man who had just graduated cum laude and was on his way to fulfilling his lifelong dream of becoming a doctor.


	7. The Morning After

A quarter of a century later, the girl who flipped him off was a middle-aged mother with a very sick child. And instead of telling him to go to hell, she leaned her head against his shoulder and said just having him there was comforting.

Had she forgotten that scene in the library? Had she forgiven? How? House never forgot a slight, was capable of waiting decades for an opportunity for revenge, never forgave anything--and what he'd done to Carolyn that night struck him as one of the most unforgivable thing he'd ever done. Even given that she needed his expertise and connections right now, how could she put that aside to the point of giving him a very warm, very sincere hug?

His mind drifted back to that first summer together. The sublet was a rathole, they had no money to speak of, but between them they had a fantastic stereo system and more records than the college radio station. Carolyn always gravitated to the same few albums, and one of her favorites was the Stones _Sticky Fingers_, especially "Wild Horses." She would sing along:

"No sweeping exits/or offstage lines, Could make me feel bitter/or treat you unkind. Wild horses couldn't drag me away, Wild, wild horses, We'll ride them someday…"

The instrumental solo playing in his head, the pain in his leg finally quieted, House fell asleep.

-0-

For someone who spent half the night brooding over lost love and the other half sleeping in a chair, House awoke the next morning feeling strangely optimistic. The sun was shining, the pain was gone, and he was miraculously free of the granular eyelids and acid stomach that usually accompany troubled rest. The apartment was so quiet that he forgot, for a moment, that he didn't have it to himself.

Grasping his cane, House hobbled to the bathroom to begin the morning ritual. He was halfway through the first step when he remembered that Cameron had spent the night. Finishing, he conscientiously lowered the toilet seat and padded into the kitchen to wash his hands.

House was supposed to start every morning with an Elavil and an 8-ounce glass of skim milk ("Men need calcium, too"), but he kept forgetting to fill the prescription, and he loathed dairy in all its forms except cheese on pizza and sandwiches. He went to the refrigerator, took out the gallon of milk Cameron bought for him every week, and silently poured a glassful down the drain. He remembered that he hadn't had his milk the day before, either, so he poured a second helping into the sink, just to keep the level right. Then he put the white-coated glass in a conspicuous spot on the counter and drank a Coke while he waited for the coffee to drip.

He was in the shower when Cameron woke up. Don't come in, he mentally implored her, but Cameron was not a mind reader and joined him in the stall. It was too small for two people, and they knocked heads and knees as they jockeyed for space under the weak dribble from the water-saver shower head she had insisted on installing.

"You let me sleep too late," she accused him.

"We both needed our rest," he said. Cameron chose to interpret this as a reference to the night before and smiled wickedly. Damn, she was a pretty woman.

Her good mood reinforced his, carrying them through breakfast and their arrival--albeit in separate cars--at the hospital. It lasted until Foreman arrived, late, for the morning staff meeting, falling heavily into a chair.

"Lupus Boy is going home," he said, and braced himself.

To save time, House summarized his reaction in one word: "Bullshit."

"They did the ANA this morning," Foreman said wearily. "It was positive. But his protein was down, so he wasn't meeting enough of the criteria to confirm lupus. And when his parents heard what the treatment is, they freaked. So Ettinger suggested that they take him home and see what happens."

"Is this our patient?" Cameron asked.

"Of course his protein was down!" House roared. "The flare started more than a week ago-- it's over now!"

Foreman raised his hands in a familiar gesture: Yes, it's a stupid call, patients are idiots, doctors are incompetent, what else is new?

"So this kid will go home and wait for his kidneys to rot so Ettinger doesn't have to do any guesswork," House fumed. "Nice medicine. Sit around for a week flapping your hands and then opt for the conservative approach so you can make your tee time at Stonybrook. Why waste a few minutes trying to figure out what's wrong and treat it, when there's a good chance the kid will eventually get so sick you can't miss the diagnosis? No wonder people hate doctors."

Cameron was still waiting for an answer. "Are we consulting?"

House lunged to his feet and disappeared down the hall.

"Apparently we are," said Chase. "Whether Ettinger likes it or not."

Seeing House flash past his office, Wilson merged into the corridor and jogged alongside him.

"Cameron was in yesterday," he remarked.

"A doctor in a hospital. Now I've heard everything," said House.

"She seemed a little down."

"She was a little hungover."

"There were some feelings of neglect, too, I think."

"Shouldn't you be busy scouting the next Mrs. Wilson?"

"House." Wilson put a braking hand on his friend. "You've been down this road before. Learn from your mistakes before you lose her, too."

"Coming from a three-time loser in the marital sweepstakes, that means a lot."

"Promise me you'll think about it?"

"I promise I'll have her surgically attached to my hip as soon as I find a vintage t-shirt big enough for the two of us," said House. "Am I dismissed, Doctor Phil?"

Wilson sighed. "You're going to screw this one up, too, aren't you?"

"I don't want to spoil the ending for you."

House escaped into an elevator. He was feeling unfairly attacked. If you thought about it, this whole thing with Cameron was Wilson's idea, aided and abetted by Cuddy. House had been perfectly happy to play misanthropic Henry Higgins to her spirited Eliza Doolittle, enjoying her hero worship, taking her occasional woman-scorned browbeatings as the price he paid for keeping her safely at arm's length, where he could enjoy her beauty and brains without getting entangled in her plans for the future. He liked her, and cared about her, but he felt at gut level that he was too old, too jaded, and too self-absorbed to accommodate his life to such an unworldly young woman--and that she was much too enamored of her vision of an ideal world to accommodate an imperfect specimen like him.

But Cameron's arrival coincided with a period in his life when everyone around him felt he needed to make some changes. Not just about the doping, although that was an issue, and even House was aware at some level that he could not expect to go on subjecting his liver to near-toxic levels of acetaminophen and hydrocodone forever. The consensus seemed to be that he was stuck in a cycle of misery and self-loathing, and that it was beginning to affect his professional life.

If it had just been friends and family riding him, House could have ignored them. But increasingly, the message was coming from strangers who barely knew who he was: patients, their loved ones, nuns, six-year-old children. At one point he half expected people to start coming in off the street to tell Dr. House a thing or two for his own spiritual health. It was hard to escape the suspicion that the universe was trying to get his attention.

The low point came shortly after the stupid, unnecessary disaster that was Stacy's return to Princeton. To this day, House wasn't sure what he'd been trying to achieve during those six months: a full-blown reconciliation complete with happy ending, or revenge for not trusting his judgement, making him a cripple, then declining to hang around until he finished punishing her for it. He dealt with the ambiguity in his usual fashion: by lobbing a hand grenade that effectively destroyed any chance of a mutually satisfying resolution. Then he drowned the anguish of his self-inflicted wounds in a freewheeling binge of drugs, booze, and (almost) anonymous sex, until he was drawn up short by a particularly underhanded (and wholely admirable) ploy by Cuddy.

When he came to, there was Cameron, still with the provocative glances, the meaningful silences, the occasional lingering touch. And there were Wilson and Cuddy, urging him to try doing something healthy and wholesome and normal for a change. They pointed out, rightly, that he wasn't doing a very good job of running his show by himself. Everything conspired to push him toward that night in his office when Cameron decided to go for broke.

"Kiss me," she challenged him.

As an 8-year-old, House once announced to a skeptical band of 10-year-olds that he was going to jump off the high diving board at the community pool. You weren't allowed to until you were 12, but the other boys had been teasing him and he felt the need to redeem himself in a big way. Ascertaining that the mothers had dozed off and the lifeguard was busy flirting with the concession stand clerk, House climbed the impossibly high ladder, his heart pounding, and crept to the edge of the board. It dipped and swayed beneath him in a sickening way. The water looked to be thousands of feet below. But he could see his jeering audience quite clearly, and he knew there was no way to go back without becoming their punching bag for the rest of the summer.

Looking down into Cameron's face, House had a sinking vision of the two of them together: the grizzled old gimp and the pretty young woman, one past the apex of his career, the other just embarking on hers, the tired old warrior and the lovely young thing who would redeem him, give him back his youthful outlook and his hope for the future; all the hoary old cliches that sent film audiences fumbling for their Kleenex and made him squirm in his seat with impatient embarrassment for the old fool.

"If you're not prepared to look stupid, then nothing great is ever going to happen, right?" said Henry, the patient whose inability to say no to his ex-wife almost killed him. The ex-wife had been there by Henry's side when he awoke from surgery...

Taking a breath, closing his eyes, House took the plunge.

Only now, three months later, did he remember the other half of Henry's equation: "On the other hand, I guess your testicles aren't gonna explode either." House did not worry about the explosive potential of his own equipment, but he was beginning to feel that in taking a chance on love, he'd put them in a vise--and it was beginning, ever so slightly, to pinch.


	8. Kidney Boy

House was aware that he was often compared to an 8-year-old, but as he invaded the pediatric ward and entered Lupus Boy's room, he considered how specious the comparison was. Here, lolling in princely indolence amid a jumble of bedclothes, toys, books, and Legos, was the real thing in camoflage pajamas: a black-eyed boy with unkempt brown hair watching cartoons with a degree of absorption unachievable by anyone who knows what a mortgage is.

In the interest of opening up the lines of communication, House tossed a small object onto the bed in front of the kid. Lupus Boy pounced.

"Game Boy Advance with Yu-Gi-Oh!" he crowed. "Oh, yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah!"

House settled into a chair and watched Lupus Boy-Kevin-swing into action. He considered the humble kidney.

Most doctors have some idea of what they want to specialize in by the time they reach medical school. House knew when he was Lupus Boy's age. He had been given a Visible Man, a model kit of the human body that was really too advanced for him to assemble (he wasn't allowed to use model glue, for one thing), but he carefully separated all the organs and examined them one by one. The brain held some interest, as did the stomach, but when he discovered the urinary system he felt he had found his calling. The built-in potential for bathroom humor had obvious appeal for a boy in second grade, but he also liked kidneys for their size and shape. When he discovered, on a trip to the supermarket with his mother, that some people actually ate kidneys, his fascination intensified. It was gross, and also amazing. He insisted that his mother buy a kidney and spent a happy hour in the kitchen with a paring knife, probing its dark shiny secrets. Then his mother cut it into chunks and threw it into the stew. It seemed easier to have The Major eat the evidence than to explain why his son was standing on a chair in an apron spreading entrails all over the counter.

The more House learned about kidneys, the more he liked them. They weren't glamorous like the heart and lungs, but the function they performed was only slightly less vital. They were could develop sudden, dramatic malfunctions—you can spot a kidney stone patient a mile away—but most of the time they did their job with minimal fuss. And when the body was under attack by disease, the kidneys often yielded the first clues in the form of foreign substances in the urine; a sign that they were no longer doing their job.

Lupus Boy's kidneys had been trying to tell them something by allowing protein to pass in his urine. In keeping with the elusive nature of the disease, the flare had passed and the urine had cleared, leaving his doctor to quite reasonably conclude that the problem had solved itself. But Ettinger had only ordered the most basic urinalysis. House wanted a more extensive series, along with blood tests, to make sure the kid wasn't developing lupus nephritis, which affects about a third of all lupus sufferers. If so, Lupus Boy couldn't afford to go home and wait for another flare; by the time it happened he could advance from a relatively benign Stage II, or mesangial nephritis, which can be treated by corticosteroids like prednisone, to the later, more dangerous stages, which required high doses of corticosteroids and immunosuppressive drugs--and if that didn't work it was Dialysis and Transplant Time.

House entertained a few black thoughts about parents who felt comfortable rejecting steroids for their kids on grounds that the worst that could happen was the need for a donor organ. Somewhere along the line transplants had become so much a part of the medical landscape that people seemed to regard them as no more remarkable than changing a camera battery. They needed a dose of reality. Maybe all those medical dramas featuring replacement parts that arrived just before the last commercial break should be required to show the patients that didn't find a match, too.

Lupus Boy was giving the Game Boy a real workout. He threw his whole body into it, feinting and dodging and adding sound effects. Dialysis sucked for anyone, but especially for kids. House reached forward and prodded the kid's bare ankle. His finger left a small dent: edema, usually the first sign of lupus nephritis. It could easily be something else, but why take a chance? All they needed was a little blood and a little urine, and they could either rule it out or treat the fucker while it was still small and easy to manage.

"What's the highest you ever got on this?" Lupus Boy demanded.

"Fifty million," said House.

Lupus Boy shot him a look for contempt. "It doesn't go that high."

"How do you know?" sneered House. "You probably can't even get a million. You can't even get a thousand."

Lupus Boy's eyes blazed. He clenched his jaw and bore down on the Game Boy. House leaned over suddenly and snatched it out of his hands.

"Hey!" the kid protested, swiping furiously at it, but House merely raised a long arm far out of his reach.

"I'll make a deal with you," he said. "If you do everything I say, you can have this back at bedtime and play with it all night. But that can only happen if you stay in the hospital. If you go home today it can't happen."

The kid was listening.

"Here's what you do," said House, and he lowered his voice and delivered a short list of instructions.

"Now remember," he added. "If you tell anyone about this, or that you even saw me, or that I told you to do any of this, the deal is off. Got it?"

Lupus Boy looked discomfited, but nodded.

Almost noon, and time for Angie's appointment with Wilson. House made a quick, surreptitious stop at the pediatric nursing station, then hightailed it over to Oncology. As he stepped out of the elevator, he saw Cameron about to board another car. She stepped backward quickly and joined him.

"How about lunch?" she asked brightly.

"We're going to have to work through it," House told her. "I have a feeling Lupus Boy is working up to a crisis. I want you to be ready to take over."

"Lupus Boy?"

"Ask Foreman," House said impatiently, and turned to go.

"Greg—" Cameron caught his arm.

House turned back sharply. Something in his face made her drop her hand.

"Never mind. You're busy. I'll go find Foreman." She turned back to the elevator bank.

House hesitated; then resumed his march toward Wilson's office. He _was_ busy, and the day was already half over.

Carolyn and Angie were already closeted with Wilson when he got there, and from the look of it Carolyn was keeping everyone hugely entertained.

"…So we got in the car and set out for the city, and halfway there Greg realized he had to pee," she was saying. "We pulled into this little country gas station…"

Oh, no, not the _Rocky Horror Picture Show_ story.

"…and he walks in, high heels and cape and Joan Crawford make up and all, and asks for the restroom key. And the clerk looks up, like this—" Carolyn dropped her jaw and bugged her eyes—"and hands him the key to the ladies' room! He says 'Right around back, Ma'm, and be sure to lock the door while you're in there.' And Greg actually takes the key and goes around the corner. Only he must not have locked the door, because another car pulls in, and this woman gets out like she really has to go, and she runs around the corner and yanks open the door and there's Greg in his corset, and she screams…"

Wilson put his head on his desk and howled.

"…and the clerk comes running. And Greg hands him the key, and says 'Thank you, dear boy, but it's really much more sociable if you don't lock the door,' and blows him a kiss, and then he gets in the car and drives away!"

Wilson raised his head and wiped his eyes as House entered. "Dr. Frankenfurter, I presume?"

House settled into the chair next to Angie. "Always the sex and drugs stuff," he complained. "No one ever tells stories about the exams I aced."

Angie grinned at him. "I'd hate to see Mom in a half slip and bra," she remarked, "but I'd pay to see you in black stockings."

"How much?" asked House, but Wilson was calling the meeting to order.

House had always felt that this was where Wilson really earned his paycheck. No one was better at taking a terrifying spector like cancer and turning it into a serious but entirely surmountable inconvenience. He outlined the tests that would have to be run; described the likely treatment regimen; then conjured an image of Angie, fully recovered and ready to rejoin the world. By the time he finished his spiel, the two women almost seemed to be looking forward to the process.

"Any questions?" Wilson looked from mother to daughter.

"I have some," said Carolyn, "but they're very specific, so I'll wait until we have the test results."

Angie was silent. She was starting to look frightened again.

"Angie wants to know if her hair is going to fall out," House said loudly. Wilson glowered at him, but Angie seemed relieved to have the question on the table.

"It's bad enough to be sick without looking like a circus freak, too," she told Wilson.

Wilson looked at House again: a certain past insensitivity had come home to roost. ("Are you sure she's not your kid?" he asked later, when they were alone.)

"I'm afraid that's almost a sure thing, Angie," he said. "But look on the bright side: Dr. House is going bald, too—and your hair will grow back."

Appointment over, House and the two women clustered in a knot in the hallway. Angie was clutching a sheaf of lab orders, nerving herself for the bone marrow biopsy and aspiration scheduled for that afternoon. House felt a rare twinge of sympathy; just the name of the test suggested a high level of pain, even before you saw the needle and realized it was going to be drilled into your hip.

"How about lunch?" he said. The words had scarcely left his lips when he saw that Cameron had joined them.

"Is this the old friend I've been hearing so much about?" she inquired, leaning a little on the word "old" but smiling brightly. Caught off-balance, House sought refuge in the formal mode.

"Carolyn, Dr. Allison Cameron. Cam-Allison, Carolyn and Angela Barton. We were just talking about grabbing something to eat; care to join us?"

"I'm afraid I'll be working through lunch today," Cameron said graciously. "I just got a patient referral. I'll talk to you about it when you get back." She moved down the hall, then turned as if suddenly remembering something.

"Oh, and Dr. House?"

"Yes, Dr. Cameron?"

"Dr. Cuddy would like to see you at your earliest convenience. Have a nice lunch." She turned the corner and was gone.


	9. The Long Afternoon

Angie began to fade before the food arrived, and her mother was anxious to get her biopsied and home to bed. So House was only a little late for clinic duty that afternoon.

He arrived in an unusually good mood. Midway through lunch he was rewarded with the information he'd been trying to sniff out since the day before: Scott Barton was more or less out of the picture.

The news came as they were waiting for their orders. They were discussing chemo coping strategies—and House was considering whether to out Wilson as a purveyor of illegal antiemetics—when Carolyn paused significantly in mid-sentence and told her daughter, "We're going to have to call Daddy."

Angie groaned and rolled her eyes extravagantly.

"Honey, he's your father. He has a right to know as soon as possible."

"Yeah, but does he have to come right now?" Angie whined.

"Of course he'll come. He'll want to be with you, support you."

"He'll want to order everyone around and yell a lot," growled Angie. "Why can't he stay in Seattle until I'm well enough to survive his kind of 'support'?"

"Seattle!" House said leadingly. "That's a hell of a commute."

"Scott and I divorced five years ago." Carolyn smiled, but her eyes warned him not to press the matter. It took some effort, but he complied, while mentally bookmarking the topic for further discussion when Angie was out of earshot.

The clinic waiting room was only half full, and most of the patients appeared to be wheezing gently—symptomatic of the mild spring flu that was making the rounds, and a good sign. Ten wheezers at five minutes apiece, and he might actually be able to sneak away for an hour to check up on Lupus Boy.

Contrary to the usual fate of such hopes, the afternoon proceeded pretty much as he'd expected. There were only two exceptions to the flu. House spotted one of them as soon as he walked into the clinic, and hoped to hell the other doctor would draw him instead, but when he entered Exam Room Three, there he was in all his glory: Mr. Bod Mod, a walking horror show of tattoos, piercings, and ritual scarification that so thoroughly covered every inch of exposed flesh that House had a hard time making out his facial features. Bod Mod removed his shirt, displaying even more gory artwork, and after some searching, located a small lump on his shoulder.

"It's probably a subcutaneous lipoma," said House, gingerly palpating it. "They're benign, nothing worry about. It doesn't hurt, does it?"

"Naw," said Bod Mod, "but I wanna get rid of it anyway."

"Is it bothering you?"

"Well, yeah," said Bod Mod, as if stating the obvious. "I mean, look at it, dude. It's ugly."

House inspected the lump thoughtfully.

"Have you thought about turning it into another piece of body art?" he suggested. "You could tattoo eyes on it, tell people you're growing another head."

Bod Mod was offended. "Dude. That's sick."

House was on his way to Exam Room Six and the last patient when Cuddy ambushed him by the nurses station.

"Can I see you in my office?" she asked, her eyes adding, "NOW."

"Another busy day," said House, brandishing the patient file. "Can I take a raincheck?"

Cuddy looked around the empty waiting room, then craned her neck to peer out the window. "Not a cloud in the sky," she observed. "I'll wait here until you're through."

House entered Exam Room Six hoping for a burst appendix, something that would create an uproar and take hours to resolve, but the patient was a soccer mom with a yeast infection who absolutely had to be on the other side of the river by three. This was not the sort of case House ordinarily lingered over anyway, so within six minutes Soccer Mom was on her way, a prescription for fluconazole in hand.

Cuddy's back was to him when he emerged. House contemplated ducking out the service door, but she had anticipated that and whistled.

"Over here," said Cuddy, gesturing.

House evinced surprise. "Oh, there you are!" he exclaimed. "You look so little next to that potted palm, I didn't even see you! Have you lost weight?" He pretended to gawk done the front of her blouse. "Wow, you must've dropped a ton! I can see your toes from here!"

Cuddy laid an obfuscatory hand across her chest and turned toward her office.

"She gets so cranky when it's been more than a week," House confided to the nurses at the station. "Looks like it's spanking day!"

Nurse Brenda was carefully expressionless. The other nurse giggled, but she was new and had not yet learned that it was a bad idea to encourage Dr. House.

-0-

Cameron and Foreman were reviewing Lupus Boy's history.

"If Kevin had lupus nephritis, would his urinanalysis have come back normal this morning?" she wondered.

"It cleared up awful fast," acknowledged Foreman, "but the kid was writhing with back pain a couple hours later. Something's not right."

"Back pain isn't indicative of lupus nephritis," Cameron objected.

Foreman thought this over. "He said his back hurt. He put his hands right where the pain would be if…and he said he'd been peeing a lot…Where did House go after the staff meeting this morning?"

Cameron rolled her eyes. "Who knows?"

Foreman started to chuckle. "The kid was coached. I'd bet a hundred on it. This has House's fingerprints all over it."

Cameron slammed Lupus Boy's file on the table. "That son of a b1tch!" she said furiously. "He's playing us!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, what're you getting so workd up about? He wants to keep the kid another night for testing. He needed us to have plausible deniability. It's just House being House."

"That's his excuse for everything, isn't it? Must be nice to fix things so every lousy thing you do is explained away: 'Oh, that's just the way he is'."

Foreman watched her silently for a moment. "Must be hard having another old girlfriend show up," he remarked.

Cameron tried to laugh. "What is it with him and these old women?" Then, suddenly fierce: "Doesn't he ever throw anything away?"

"Would that make you feel better? Even knowing someday he might throw you away, too?"

"I'd almost rather he did, once and for all, instead of this...stringing me along, then dropping me in a corner to pick up some other toy that caught his eye. Either it's a patient or a woman or some stupid new game."

Foreman watched his fingers beat a quick pulse on the tabletop. "Every time I look at you now, I think of the old saying 'Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it'," he remarked.

"You think I can't handle him?" she asked defensively.

Foreman declined to answer that. "I think you can't always remember why you thought it was worth it," he said.


	10. Quittin' Time

"Dr. Ettinger paid me a call this morning," Cuddy began.

"He has time for socializing since he stopped practicing medicine," said House.

"He's furious. He's threatening to file a complaint!"

"Did someone put vaseline on his stethoscope earpieces?

"Someone tampered with his patient's file!"

"Why do you assume I had anything to do with it?"

Cuddy whipped open the folder on her desk and read out loud, "It's the immune system, Stupid!"

"You think I did that?"

"It's your handwriting!"

"I tried to make it look like nurse's handwriting," House said ruefully. "I guess I'm still not making my letters loopy enough."

"I've warned you about this—"

"I gave him a little friendly advice."

"And you examined his patient!"

House was disappointed. "Lupus Boy ratted me out?"

"You were seen going into his room."

"By Ettinger's spies."

"You interferred with his patient!"

"He was done with him anyway."

"House—"

"Cuddy. He was sending the kid home because he didn't want to bother trying to figure out what was wrong with him. Did you read the chart?"

"I did. And Kevin Mahoney doesn't meet the criteria for lupus."

"He did yesterday. Look, just let me run a few tests on him. If I'm wrong, no harm done. If I'm right and we send him home, the chances are good he'll come back a lot sicker next time. He might even need a kidney transplant. And getting a kidney out of you is like…getting a kidney out of you. With a Swiss Army Knife and no anesthesia."

Cuddy digested that image for a moment.

"I'm just trying to save time here," said House. "And organs. A kidney saved is a kidney earned."

"All right," said Cuddy. "But did you have to rub Ettinger's nose in it?"

"No," admitted House, "but that made it a lot more fun."

Cuddy rubbed her forehead. "Next time leave out the fun parts. You have been officially chastized. Now go and focus all that energy on something that is your business, for god's sake. How are things with Cameron?"

"Great. Wonderful. Couldn't be…wonderfuller."

"Foreman said he thought you two were on the outs."

"Foreman should start thinking about where he's going to be in six months, when his fellowship is up."

"Cameron's is up in three months. Have you two talked about that?"

No, because House didn't want to even think about it. "It's under consideration."

Cuddy gave him a level look. "That's good, House. I'm glad to hear it. You don't want to let her just slip through your fingers." She laughed. "For one thing, she's the only woman I know who will put up with you."

The old irritation was creeping into House's voice. "You're right," he said. "Some men look for shared interests. Some look for undying passion. My life has been more or less a quest to find a woman who will put up with me."

His good mood gone, his leg now throbbing, House stumped into his office. He longed to raid his clean laundry stash, but Cameron was in the conference room working on her laptop. Poised to sink into his chair, House realized belatedly that he should have gone directly to her. He straightened with an effort and entered the conference room.

"I hope you got some lunch," he said, lowering himself into a chair across from her.

"I ate," Cameron said composedly. "How was lunch with your friend?"

"Fine. Angie's a great kid."

"The mother seems nice, too."

"She's all right," House said carefully. "Listen, it occurs to me that I owe you a dinner. At least. Want to try that new Mexican place tonight?"

Cameron looked up, her expression neutral. "My Women in Medicine meeting is tonight," she said evenly.

"We'll go early."

"A group of us are having dinner before the meeting to plan the agenda."

"Want to see a movie afterwards?"

"It's going to go late."

House thought this over but could not come up with an alternative suggestion.

"Okay then," he said, and headed back to his office. At the door he stopped, backtracked, and bent down to kiss her forehead. "Have a nice time."

Cameron rose swiftly, seized his head, and pressed her lips to his. House felt her desperation and tried to answer with reassurance, but all he could summon was regret. She drew away and smoothed her vest, closed her laptop and tucked it to her chest.

"You, too," she said, and left.

It occurred to House that someday his clearest memory of Cameron would be of watching her stride away from him, and the feeling of distance that had nothing to do with miles as her figure receded.

Stash raided, he was bouncing a grey and red foam ball against the window and idly considering dinner when Wilson appeared in the doorway and vamped.

"Let's do the tiiime waaarp agaaaaain," he warbled, hideously out of tune.

House chucked the ball at Wilson's forehead. "Aaahhssshole," he chanted, possibly in homage to audience participation.

Wilson invited himself in to sit down. "You must've looked cute in that corset," he grinned. "I bet the boys couldn't keep their hands off you."

"I turned them all down," House flirted back. "I was saving myself for you."

Wilson tossed Angie's test results at him. "ALL," he said. "How ironic that in my line of work, that's good news."

House nodded, scanning the results. Wilson watched him thoughtfully.

"That Carolyn is pretty special," he said. "How'd you screw that one up?"

"She found out I was doing her mom," House muttered. "Why is this any of your business?"

"It's not," Wilson conceded. "But I am morbidly curious about your love life."

"If you like being morbid, let's talk about yours. How many wives is it now?"

"At least I move on when it's over. You seem to get stuck at goodbye."

"Really? Let's test that theory. Goodbye, Wilson." He looked up. "Nope, still there. Maybe you're right."

Wilson rose. "Just be careful, House," he said.

"I always am," said House.


	11. It Goes to Eleven

There was a strange car in the driveway when House got to Carolyn's that night. Could Scott have flown across the continent since lunchtime? Carolyn's idiot dog announced his arrival at the kitchen door. Through the window, he could see a tall gangly youth standing next to Carolyn at the stove. Not Scott, then.

"Greg! Come in!" Carolyn hollered over the dog's bellows. "Knee her in the chest, she'll shut up eventually. We were just about to eat; would you like to join us?"

House approached the stove and peered into the pot. Linguine and clam sauce—an all-time favorite from their undergraduate days. Spaghetti is cheap, and those small cans of clams fit into a deep coat pocket without bulging.

"Angie's throat is still so sore, I thought this might slide down easily," Carolyn explained. "Isn't it funny that you should show up the night I make it? Oh, and this is Nate, Angie's gentleman caller. Nathan, Dr. House."

The kid nodded. "Angie told me about you. She says you're not as full of crap as most doctors."

"Thank you," House said gravely. "It's nice to meet you, too."

"Nate, why don't you take this in to Angie? You can come back for her salad if she wants it." The boy obeyed.

"It's movie night. We're eating in the livingroom," Carolyn told House. "We don't usually do that, but tonight is kind of special. Your friend Dr. Wilson called a couple of hours ago; he wants Angie to check into the hospital tomorrow morning so he can get her over this infection. Then he wants her to stay there for the first couple of treatments."

House made what he hoped was an encouraging noise.

"Well!" Carolyn said briskly, "at least we know what we're up against and what we're going to do about it. He's very nice, Dr. Wilson. Is he married?"

"Sometimes."

Nate reappeared, helped himself to pasta, and shambled back into the livingroom.

"We're going to start!" Angie croaked a moment later.

"Wait!" Carolyn commanded. She ladled out helpings for the two of them and led the way into the next room. It was lit only by the glow from the television screen, but House could make out a two-headed tangle on the couch that, as his eyes adjusted to the dark, resolved itself into Angie and Nate, with an afghan thrown over their legs. Carolyn seated him in a recliner and settled into its mate. Idiot Dog, having accepted his presence, flopped at their feet and began to snore.

"What are we watching?" asked House.

"_Harold and Maude_," rasped Angie.

It sounded familiar. "Have I seen it?" he asked Carolyn.

"I saw it," she answered. "You probably slept through it. We used to go to the two dollar movie house in Collegetown," Carolyn explained to the two on the couch. "If there weren't enough car chases and explosions, Greg went comatose the minute the lights went out."

"I got a lot of quality sleep at the movies," House recalled.

The movie started. House vaguely remembered the basic plot: young Harold, a depressed misfit obsessed with death, falls in with an elderly free spirit named Maude. Under her influence, he gives up his hobby—faking his own demise—and begins to enjoy life just as Maude decides she's had enough of it. Maude takes a lethal dose of sleeping pills and although Harold has her rushed to the hospital, she dies. House shifted uneasily in his seat as, just before Maude succumbed, Harold confessed, "I love you."

"Harold, that's wonderful!" said Maude. "Go and love some more."

Movie over, Angie rose from the couch. "We're going to turn in," she said, and cast a meaningful look at her mother. Carolyn stood up and stretched.

"Why don't we go sit on the porch for awhile?" she asked House, and led the way to the front door. They settled into wicker chairs and looked out over the horse farm. The moon was almost full.

House cleared his throat. "You're pretty hip for an old lady," he observed.

"Just an immoral Northeasten liberal parent," Carolyn sighed. "But really, what is the point of pretending I have control over a 19-year-old college student's sex life? Remember how my parents made you sleep in the basement, and me two floors above, with two dogs between us?"

"We always found a work-around," House grinned.

Carolyn laughed. "God, we were a couple of monkeys, weren't we? It's a miracle we never got caught."

House let a beat of silence go by, then said carefully, "It was an adventure right up until the end, wasn't it?"

Her mouth tightened. "Do you really want to talk about that?"

"I'm curious. I half expected you to give me the finger again when you recognized me yesterday. A lot of people would have."

Carolyn drew her knees to her chest and gazed out at the pastures across the street. "It was a long time before I could think about that without wanting to kill you," she admitted. "In a way, though, I was relieved. I thought, good, now I can be over him. It was like a green light to commit to Scott. But—things happen, and when you look back, you start to see things you didn't notice at the time. It starts to make some sense."

"If you've actually figured it out, I wish you'd share it with me," House said frankly. "I've never been able to explain it myself."

Carolyn sighed. "Can we talk? For real? I knew we were in trouble the night I met your parents." She checked his face for permission to go on. His expression was noncommital, so she plunged ahead. "It connected the dots for me. I'd noticed that when you'd stay with them over breaks, you always came back in a bad mood. You'd be tense and abrupt and hypercritical for a week before you'd settle down and start being fun again. Then you'd go home and come back and start all over again.

"That night with your parents…look, I know he's your father, but I gotta say, I couldn't wait to get away from him, and get you away from him, too. He was so—rigid, so uptight, so insistent that everything had to be done in a certain way, A to B to C. I couldn't stand the way he needled you. And your mother." Carolyn paused, considering the wisdom of criticizing a man's mother, then decided to go for it. "She let him poke and poke and poke at you, and the minute you started to stand up for yourself, she'd step in and stop the fight. What was up with that?"

House looked over at Carolyn, embarrassed and gratified by her indignation. "You got all that from one dinner?"

"It was hard to miss."

House bounced his cane on its rubber tip. "So you think he had something to do with that scene in the library."

"Didn't he? We were planning to spend another summer together. Instead, he scooped you up and put you to work in the salt mines. I know he didn't like me; I can just imagine the father-son talks you had leading up to that part about seeing other people."

"It wasn't all his fault," House said miserably. "I could have told him to stuff the job. I didn't have the guts."

"You were still dependent on him. You wanted to be a doctor. That's all you ever wanted."

"Stop making excuses for me."

"Stop beating yourself up. Greg," she put a hand on his knee and held his eyes with hers. "It was the Seventies. We were all into the 'love the one you're with' gestalt. And we were still kids. We were learning. That's what these early love affairs are for: to make dumb mistakes and get all the disasters out of the way so you can go on to have healthy relationships."

They sat a moment in thought. Then Carolyn laughed.

"You used to call your dad The Major," she said. "I started thinking of him as The Major Asshole. Whenever you'd come back from seeing him and started acting mean, I'd think 'The Major Asshole is at it again'."

House laughed. Then he gibed, but gently, "So all your relationships after that were healthy?"

Carolyn groaned. "You don't really want to hear about me and Scott."

"Not if you don't want to tell."

"I don't mind. It's just so banal. We had a super time in grad school. No money, but we made a lot of friends at Penn, out partying every night, it was great.

"Then Scott got his MBA and his first real job, I got pregnant, and overnight he turned into Husband and Father of the Year, 1955. I was discouraged from going back to work. I was encouraged to put some effort into being a wife and mother. I went along with it for awhile, but man, it was hard to meet his standards. The higher up in the organization he went, the more units and departments and divisions he was put in charge of, the more exacting he became at home, the more he treated me like an administrative assistant. If the washing machine broke, if the cat was run over by a car, if Angie got sick, there'd be a full-scale investigation with a plan to be more preventatively proactive. It gradually occurred to me that in spite of my best efforts to avoid it, I had married a Major Asshole."

House snorted.

"Anyway," Carolyn continued. "We tried to have another baby. Nothing happened. We spent tens of thousands of dollars so the infertility doctors could turn my butt into a pincushion for needles full of hormones—still nothing. I had a masters degree and no career to show for it, my husband found my homemaking skills inadequate, and in spite of having all the resources of modern science at my disposal, I couldn't do something any dumb teenager can do without getting completely naked. I felt like a failure in every arena. I'd always dabbled in drinking, but now I got serious about it.

"It went on like this for five years. Then one morning I woke up, hungover as usual, and thought, 'Fuck this. I don't wanna feel like shit anymore.' To make a long story short: I got into a recovery program and sobered up. Once I could think clearly again, I tried to find something I could do. You know I've always loved horses; I unpeeled Scott's finger from some of his money and started riding lessons for me and Angie. Then I bought a horse, then another one. It worked; I found something I was good at, and so did Angie.

"I started to assert myself more. Scott didn't like that. Well, to be fair, he thought he'd married a very conventional woman. At the time, that's what I thought I wanted to be. Now I started opening cans instead of making gourmet meals from scratch, and blowing off Important Dinners because Angie had a show the next morning, and telling him to take his own damned shirts to the cleaners and explain his starch policies himself. I was no longer the kind of woman he'd had in mind. So he went out and found one who was."

Carolyn drew a deep breath. "The day I found out about his affair was—the happiest day of my life." She shouted with laughter, and House joined in. "Oh, god, oh god, I was awful. He kept saying 'Carrie, be reasonable, we can save our marriage if we try,' and I was saying, 'I can't take that chance: get out, get out, get OUT!'" She sobered a little and added, "Besides, I wanted him at a safe remove from Angie. She was going through this awful phase, total Goth with purple hair and this appalling boyfriend. Scott couldn't stand it, he was always on her case, he would sink right to her level and they'd scream at each other like two adolescents. So I hired a good lawyer, got a modest settlement that lets us keep our horses and still pay for college, and Scott moved to the other end of the country. End of story. Your turn."

Startled, House took evasive action. "Not much to tell."

"Start with the leg. This isn't a temporary thing, is it?" She pointed to the cane.

House began, intending to deliver a cool and strictly technical account of the infarction. But the unfamiliar intimacy of the setting was getting to him; before he realized it, he was talking about Stacy, and the disaster that led to their breakup.

When he got to the part where Stacy overrode his instructions and ordered the "middle ground" surgery that left him without a key chunk of flesh, Carolyn gasped. "I can't believe anyone would do that," she said.

House gave a little laugh. "Well, to be fair, they weren't sure I'd ever wake up from the coma," he said. "And I'd already died once, so I guess she lost faith in my judgement."

"And you broke up after that."

The tightness that always took hold of his throat when he thought of that time made it hard to answer. "I couldn't stop beating her up about it," he said, finally. "I snarled and picked and she finally packed and left. And then I was angry because she wouldn't stay and take it."

Carolyn thought about this for a moment. "A lot of relationships don't survive a crisis like that," she said.

"You're making excuses for me again."

"I'm not. You seem to think these things are all your fault. I'm saying that it's hard to live with someone. If you think about it, we were designed to mate at 15, breed like bunnies for awhile, then drop dead before 30—earlier for women, because they usually died in childbirth. Now we live into our seventies. It can be 50 years till death do us part. The amazing thing is that anyone makes it."

"My parents have."

"Yeah, well…" Carolyn rolled her eyes.

They sat for a moment, considering. Then House said, with an effort, "I saw Stacy again last year. She was—there was an opportunity to try again. I didn't take it."

"Why not? It sounds like you still have strong feelings for her."

"I couldn't see it ending well."

"You didn't even want to try."

"She's married now. She loves him. I couldn't see busting that up for something that might fall apart in six months."

Carolyn nodded. "But you haven't given up on love," she said. "That's a good sign."

House looked at her blankly.

"The little girl doctor?" Carolyn hinted.

"Oh! Camer—Cameron. Yeah. She's great." House was absorbed in bouncing his cane again, trying to aim the tip so it hit the same knothole in the porch floor each time.

"She seems very taken with you."

"Yeah. I had some doubts about dating a junior at first, but everyone kept saying she'd be good for me. So I gave it a shot. And they're right—she has been good for me." He stood abruptly. "Listen, it's late, you have a busy day ahead of you. I'd better get moving."

Carolyn followed him down the porch steps without speaking. When he got to his car, however, she leaned against the driver's side door with her arms folded and regarded him intently.

"So you opted out of a relationship you really wanted because you were afraid you couldn't make it work, but you opted into one you feel ambivalent about because other people thought it was a good idea? That doesn't sound like you, Greg."

House shrugged. "You can't always get what you want."

Carolyn pushed away from the car.

"The sayings of Chairman Mick," she said. "Just don't forget the Joe Jackson Corollary."

Again, House looked blank.

"'You can't get what you want/till you know what you want'," quoth Carolyn. "Good night, Dr. House." She squeezed his hand and turned back to the house. He waited to make sure she got inside safely. Then he dropped the car into reverse, backed out of the driveway, and drove slowly, thoughtfully, back to Princeton.


	12. Round Midnight

What do men want?

The answer is not as obvious as we are led to believe—or so it seemed to Allison Cameron. Granted, she had less experience in this area than most attractive women her age. But if the answer really were as simple as good sex and good food, her lover ought to be very happy with her. And it was becoming painfully clear that he was not.

Even worse, Cameron was beginning to think that she wasn't very happy, either. This seemed too terrible a defeat to contemplate. Hadn't she strived for 18 months, doing everything in her power to make this man love her? And now, after surviving rejection and waiting out the Stacy Warner months, she finally had him by her side. Cameron was accustomed to working hard, getting what she wanted, and being more than satisfied with the results. Even medical school, which had almost killed her, had been as exhilarating as it had been terrifying. It was unthinkable that being with House could be one part wonderful to four parts aggravation, loneliness, and tension, but every week she was finding it harder not to think the unthinkable.

Cameron had grimly barred the mental door against the realization that there was a certain amount of sheer dislike of House in the mix, too. But subconsciously she sensed the thought standing on the doorstep, waiting.

She wondered briefly if Chase might be right; she was too young for House. But she felt in her gut that it was an unsatisfactory explanation. Her husband had been much older than her, too, and he hadn't cared that she didn't know who the Queen of Soul was, or that she hadn't watched the first moonwalk as it happened. Wait: did House really care? He would grumble a brief, unilluminating explanation, or suggest that she Google it, but he usually had something more compelling on his mind to begin with.

Did House really care about anything having to do with her? There: she'd let that thought in at last. He could be gentle. At times he seemed anxious not to hurt her (at other times the thought that he might be trampling her feelings didn't seem to occur to him). But Cameron had seen him with Stacy, had watched him engage with her in a way she'd never seen happen with anyone else. When Stacy came into the room, House lost that air of abstraction and focused on her alone. Even when they quarreled, there was an intimacy to the moment that Cameron had not come close to achieving with House. On the contrary: they seemed to bounce off of one another, touching but never connecting. The fact was, he never seemed to be more than 50 percent with her, even in bed.

Cameron played with a long lock of hair and looked unhappily around the livingroom. It was after eleven. She'd been there since ten, when her meeting ended. It was possible House was somewhere with Wilson, or had gone to the movies by himself. He was a night owl, prone to prowl after dark. He hadn't expected her to come over. Why did she feel such a sense of foreboding as the minutes ticked by?

All right, time to get a grip. Instead of brooding over what went wrong, wouldn't it be more productive to figure out how to make things right? What was the hallmark of a successful relationship? Shared interests. They had medicine, but apparently that wasn't enough.

Her eye fell on the boxes of sports memoribilia. "Stacy likes baseball and basketball," she heard House say to Wilson once, "but her religion is football. No talking from Saturday afternoon till Monday night. You could have sex with her if you wanted, but she had to be facing the TV." Cameron shuddered a little at the vision this inspired, hoped it was another one of House's gross (in every sense of the word) exaggerations, but forced herself to consider the implications of what he'd said. House's tone was admiring; he respected Stacy's singleminded devotion to the stupid game. It was one of the things he loved about her.

If we're not connecting it's at least half my fault, she thought. I expect him to want to know everything about me, but I don't make much of an effort to know anything about him—at least, none of the things he thinks are important.

With a sudden burst of energy, she went to the bookshelf and took down the box closest to her end. It was marked "Yankees Stats: 1964 to 1985."

This is going to be a pretty dry read, she thought, smiling, but at least it's a start.

House arrived twenty minutes later to find Cameron sitting at his kitchen table, a banker's box on the chair next to her and an open bottle of Vicodin in front of her.

His first thought—"Busted!"—was immediately replaced by another: Cameron had barely registered his entrance, seemed listless and dazed. Her face was red and streaked with tears. House shoved the box off the chair and sat down, turning her head so he could check her eyes. The pupils were shrunken, her breathing slow, her skin damp. She made wavering eye contact with him and tried a smile.

"I know why you like this stuff so much," she enunciated.

"How many did you take? Cameron? CAMERON. How many?"

She made an effort to focus. "Two."

House swore violently. Two 10-milligram tabs was a stiff dose even for him, and Cameron had less than half his body weight and none of the tolerance that comes from six years of daily use. It probably wouldn't kill her, but it wouldn't hurt to get it out of her system, either.

Fifteen minutes later they were huddled over the toilet, a half-empty glass of salt water on the bathroom counter. House held back her hair as Cameron retched. There wasn't much coming up, but after awhile House was satisfied that they'd gotten most of it and let her come up for air. He wiped her face with a cold washcloth and checked her eyes again; they were starting to look better, and as she recovered from the vomiting fit, her breathing normalized as well.

They crouched together on the bathroom floor like two penitents at a shrine, holding onto one another's shoulders. The pose had the odd effect of creating space between them rather than bringing them together. Cameron began to weep.

"You said you quit."

"_You_ said I quit," House reminded her, but softly.

"Why do you need that stuff when you have me to make you happy?"

"I think you should lie down now. Here, rinse your mouth; good. Let's go."

He led her into his room and pulled back the covers. She obediently kicked off her shoes and climbed in. House tucked the bedclothes up around her chin, turned on a low light near the window, and went to the door, intending to get a chair and a book.

"Do you love me?"

The question exploded like a shot in the dark. House paused.

"Do you?" she insisted. "I have to know. I have a right to know."

"Go to sleep, Cameron. We'll talk in the morning."

"Allison," she whispered. "My name is Allison…"

House went into the kitchen and set the bankers box upright. He scooped up the assorted junk on the floor and dumped it back in. Then he took the pill bottle over to the kitchen sink. He removed one pill and swallowed it with water—his throat was too dry to even think of taking it without—put the cap back on, and set the bottle on the shelf above the sink, where anyone could see it. Time to be more upfront about everything, he thought. Might as well start here.

Then he put the bankers box back on its shelf, picked up a chair and the new _Lancet_, and hopped awkwardly back to the bedroom to begin his vigil.


	13. Can We Still Be Friends?

House awoke the next morning with a stiff neck and the kind of headache that defies analgesics. Exhaustion and cramped leg muscles had forced him to abandon the chair for the bed at around 2 am, but he slept sitting up, on top of the covers, keeping a careful distance from the sleeping Cameron; just close enough to check her pulse and breathing, no closer.

Gingerly he swung out of bed and hobbled into the bathroom to pee. Washing his hands, he peered into the mirror. A balding, middle-aged doctor with a graying muzzle stared back through heavy-lidded, bloodshot blue eyes. America's sweetheart, he thought, grimly amused. No wonder the babes can't get enough of you.

He limped into the kitchen and started coffee. Seeing the prescription bottle restored to its old place on the kitchen shelf, he automatically reached for it—then drew his hand back. No, if he was going to do this right, he would have to do it without artificial aids.

It takes some effort for a man with a cane to transport two mugs of coffee from one room to another without scalding himself, but House managed. He set the mugs on the bedside table and pulled the chair over to the side of the bed where Cameron was just beginning to stir. He sat down and waited.

It took her a moment to register her whereabouts, and another moment to recall the events of the night before. He could tell when it happened because she winced and shut her eyes again. House knew the feeling.

Cameron opened her eyes and looked at him mournfully. She made as if to speak, but House touched his own lips with a forestalling finger and handed her a mug.

"Drink," he said firmly. "Don't talk. I've got something to say, I've never managed to say it right before, and I don't want to screw it up this time."

He paused, squinted up at the ceiling for inspiration, then continued, heavily, "Every woman I've been…involved with—Carolyn, and Stacy, and there were three or four between—walked away hating me. I'm used to people hating me. Most of the time I couldn't care less—most people are assholes. But I minded that Carolyn and Stacy hated me, and I really minded that when they left, they didn't like themselves very much, either. And if there's anything I can do to avoid making you leave the same way, I'd like to give it a shot."

He glanced at Cameron and saw that her eyes had filled with tears.

"Cameron—Allison, don't. We can't go on like this. You know that, don't you?" She nodded, the tears spilling over. "It's not that you don't make me happy, it's that you're so unhappy. I don't know how to fix that. I'm not sure I can. You love people; you like to engage with the world. I like to be alone and I disengage whenever I can. You hate sports metaphors and I hate dressing up and going out. We don't have a lot to build on, do we?"

He handed her a Kleenex and she blew her nose, still nodding.

"All right. I'm not going to say it was a mistake to get together. The real mistake was all mine, and it happened long before you wound up here. Remember when you asked me if I liked you? I said I didn't. I lied.

"I did like you. I've always liked you. You're uptight and insecure and you still think you can change the world with positive thoughts and a sunny outlook, but you are also brave and smart and damned tenacious. You can't keep me from being a jerk, but you pull me up short when I'm going too far. I like looking at you. I like knowing you."

"Then why can't this work?" Cameron asked helplessly.

"I don't know," said House, sincerely baffled. "But whatever it is that makes you want to eat and sleep with someone, that lets you relax and not worry about every word you say, we don't have it. Be honest—you feel it too, don't you?"

Cameron stared at into her mug. Another tear dripped onto the bedcovers. "I can't believe we couldn't find a way to make it work," she whispered.

"Well, god knows you tried," House said, laughing a little. "The Greg House Reclamation Project. That persistence of yours is pretty amazing. But sometimes persistence gets you nothing but frustration. You have to know when to cut your losses."

He took her hand and made her look at him. "If you don't, you could end up with nothing to show for it but bitterness. And I need you too much as a friend to let that happen."

Cameron leaned her forehead against his shoulder. "If you're trying to make me stop loving you, you have a funny way of doing it," she observed.

He stroked her hair. "Go ahead and love me. I'll love you, too. But don't hang your future on me. Let's not drive each other crazy pretending to be something we're not."

Later, as he walked her to the door, Cameron stopped and faced him.

"Are you going to be all right?" she asked.

"I'm fine. I'll probably kick myself for letting a hot babe like you get away, but I'll get over it." He hugged her quickly. "Now, get out of here. You need a shower, and you better not be late for work."

He opened the door. "Oh, and Cameron—?"

She turned.

"No more experiments, okay? You're really lousy at it. Leave the drugs to the professionals."

Cameron smiled weakly, waved, and trotted down the walk to her car. House watched her toss her purse inside, slide behind the wheel, and pull away. He shut the door and stood for a moment, leaning on the sill. He closed his eyes—and smiled. Then he pushed himself upright and, with renewed energy, limped to the bathroom to remove the water-saver showerhead and replace it with the old, wasteful, but gratifyingly powerful one.

-0-

She didn't want him to see her cry again, so Cameron drove halfway to her apartment before pulling over and opening the floodgates. Oddly enough, it lasted only a few minutes, and when it was over she sat gazing out the windshield, strangely calm.

Admitting defeat had been a blow to her pride, but it was also unexpectedly liberating. The truth was, she'd felt increasingly trapped by her own feelings for House from the moment she'd first become aware of them. She couldn't make them go away; she couldn't move out of his orbit. Becoming his lover had only made it worse. Now she had to prove she could take it, and her existence became focused on rising to the challenge to the point where she neglected to ask herself whether "taking it" was a healthy goal for a relationship. In forcing her to confront her discomfort, House had set her free.

Cameron slid open the vanity mirror on her sun visor and contemplated her reflection. She had loved and lost, but she had gained something as well: a friend and mentor who would always be there for her, whom she could think of with warmth and affection, but whose eccentric and self-destructive behavior was no longer her responsibility. It could have been worse; much, much worse.

She was an attractive young woman with a medical degree, about to successfully complete a prestigious fellowship, with nothing tying her to Princeton and no reason not to entertain any offer that appealed to her. It was a beautiful sunny day, and she was on her way to do a job she loved. For the first time since she was accepted to medical school, her life seemed rich with adventure and possibility instead of a test of endurance.

Cameron put the car in drive and headed home. On the way, she stopped at McDonald's for coffee. While she was there, she ordered an Egg McMuffin to go with it. She suddenly realized that she was very hungry.


	14. A Beautiful Morning

It was only a little past ten when House roared into the hospital parking lot, revved the engine a couple of times in case Cuddy's window was open, and dismounted. No doubt about it, there was something very satisfying about parking his bike in the handicapped spot. He could almost feel the outraged glares of passersby, and their confusion when they saw the qualifying sticker neatly pasted to the license plate. The DMV clerk hadn't been able to wrap her head around it, either. "We don't issue a lot of these to motorcycles," she said. "Maybe you should," House told her severely, and limped away with his sticker while she tried to make sense of that, too.

Cameron was waiting for the elevator when he arrived. House slowed and looked her over carefully. She was calm and poised. He felt as if he were seeing her for the first time in months; and for the first time in months, he was genuinely glad to see her.

She glanced over, saw him, glanced down, and smiled. House relaxed; that was the bad moment, and it went very well. He positioned himself next to her and pretended to be watching the elevator lights make their way down the column.

"How you doing?" he asked, out of the side of his mouth.

Another smile. "Fine."

The elevator arrived. They stepped inside, the only passengers. They both watched the lights going up the column. Then House spoke again.

"Wanna fool around?"

She punched him in the arm. Hard. "You are such a jerk." But she was laughing.

They entered the conference room together. Foreman and Chase were already there, tossing a sock with a rubber ball in the toe back and forth across the table. House reached out and deftly caught it in midair.

"Only two announcements this morning, both brief," he said. "Number one: Chase, your new shirt is uglier than a zit on a warthog's ass. Number two: As of 7:15 this morning, Dr. Cameron and I are officially—" he paused to let the tension build—"broken up. From now on, when I do something that really pisses her off, she will refer to me as her rat bastard boss instead of her rat bastard boyfriend. We do not wish to discuss the particulars of the break-up or the events leading up to it. Thank you for your cooperation."

Stunned silence. The two young doctors swung their gaze to Cameron, who graced them with a brilliant smile.

"Uh…congratulations," said Foreman, finally.

"Thank you. We're very happy," said House. "Now, Lupus Boy: how's the wee-wee du jour?"

Foreman passed a folder to Cameron, who opened it, scanned the contents, and gave an exasperated sigh.

"Inconclusive," she said. "Creatine clearance test: borderline. Proteinuria: borderline."

"If the flare is over, borderline is still significant," mused House. "Okay, next stop Biopsytown."

"Can't we do the DNA first?" asked Chase. "I hate to punch holes in a kid if there's an alternative."

"A biopsy will give me more to go on," said House. "Okay, Cameron, you go bully the parents into signing the papers. You two…keep practicing. You throw like girls." He lobbed the sock ball at Chase, who caught it just in time to avert a broken nose.

"Cuddy said we might get a new case this afternoon," said Foreman.

"What kind?"

"She didn't say. She just said to be ready. She was on her way to a meeting. She looked pretty grim."

"She probably just got thrown off MySpace for hitting on high school boys again," suggested House. "Okay, let's get rolling. Class dismissed."

As they exited, House said to Cameron, "Want me to come along for this?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Do I want your help persuading a kid's parents to let us keep poking at him when all they want to do is take him home? Uh…no. I think I can handle this." She turned toward the elevator bank.

"Okay," House yelled after her, "but remember: If they grab the kid and try to run, take out the father first. Hit him low, then recover the fumble."

Wilson emerged from his office.

"I came out to see what you lovebirds were cooing about," he said. "I take it you had a good evening?"

"Lousy evening. Terrific morning."

"You made up?"

"We broke up." House gimped back to his office; he hadn't had a dose since the night before, and a certain craving was beginning to tickle the back of his throat. In a few minutes it would be overwhelming.

Wilson followed him in and shut the door. "You broke up."

"Did I say that out loud? Yes. Broke it off. Terminated the relationship. Uninstalled the romance software. _Alle ist kaput_."

Wilson sagged into a chair. "I don't believe it. The first really healthy relationship in—your life—and you threw it away."

"Define healthy." House opened the drawer where he kept his clean clothes.

"You were off the pills, for one thing."

With a flourish, House produced the prescription bottle, removed a pill, and flipped it into his mouth.

"I wasn't off them," he said. "I just got sneakier."

Wilson looked despondent.

"Why the gloom, Yenta? This is a good thing. We were making each other miserable. Cameron was trying her damnedest to housetrain me, I wasn't cooperating, and the strain was killing her. I couldn't stand to watch her suffer anymore."

"Cameron wasn't suffering!"

"Open your eyes, Wilson. If she'd gotten any thinner we'd have to paperclip her to her chair so she wouldn't blow away in a draft. Besides," he flung his arms open, "she was eating up all of our 'us' time."

"You're sure you're okay with this?"

"I'm ecstatic. I finally managed to break up with someone who walked away without wanting to bust my skull. You should try it sometime—it's better than…well, I was going to say sex, but that's ridiculous."

Wilson considered possible responses, decided to let it go. "Speaking of exes, Carolyn Barton brought Angie in this morning. I'm told they made quite an entrance."

"How so?"

"Two suitcases, three storage boxes, and an iMac G5. Apparently they decided to make her room more homelike. Word is it looks like a cross between an opium den and a media center."

"You haven't seen it yet?"

"No, because Scott Barton showed up first thing this morning, too, and he made an entrance as well. He trapped Carolyn and me in my office for 45 minutes, trying to find out whose fault it is that Angie has leukemia."

"Any theories?"

"He's working on the premise that it's all Carolyn's doing, but he's not ready to let Angie's high school, college, or the state of New Jersey off the hook just yet."

"He always was a fun guy. Makes you wonder what he's got that I ain't got."

"Hard to imagine why she'd take up with a hostile, insensitive son of a bitch like that when she could've had you," Wilson agreed.

"Women are strange," House said affably. The craving had abated; he rose.

"Where are you going?"

"Pediatrics. I want to make sure Cameron doesn't let Lupus Boy go without getting a chunk of his kidney first."

"Is it a good idea to interfere just now?"

House was miffed. "I never interfere. Basically, I see my role as mentoring and supporting and encouraging my juniors. And kicking their asses when they screw up." He took off for the elevators.


	15. Negotiations

Cameron was huddled with Lupus Boy's parents just outside the kid's room when House arrived on Pediatrics. He sidled along the wall until he could see them without their seeing him. Lupus Boy was still throttling the Game Boy. House wondered if the kid had slept at all the night before.

Cameron appeared to be holding her own, but she was up against two worried, angry parents who already felt they'd been jerked around by the medical establishment long enough, and were tag-teaming against her charm offensive. Faint snatches of conversation drifted past him:

"But if the tests don't say he does have lupus, doesn't that mean he doesn't?"

"Not necessarily," said Cameron. "Inconclusive doesn't mean the same thing as negative. We feel there's good reason to keep after this."

"How long do you plan on keeping him here testing things? How will you know when to stop?"

With an air of patiently reiterating the obvious, Cameron began again. "Dr. House thinks the biopsy will tell us everything we need to know."

"Who's Dr. House? What happened to Dr. Ettinger?"

"Dr. Ettinger seemed to think he was fine. Where'd this other guy come from?"

Not for the first time, House wondered what synaptic misfire or adrenalin rush made parents leap to the barricades in defense of their kids—and start shooting their allies. Nine times out of ten, when you tell a parent a kid is sick, they act like the real disease is you. It made it hard to form "a partnership in quality healthcare," as Cuddy had lately come to describe the doctor/patient relationship. House experienced a moment of nostalgia for a time, pre-Internet, when patients dwelt in the land of blissful ignorance and a doctor could tell them any dumb thing he wanted and have his words accepted as gospel.

He shifted a little to take some weight off his right leg. In doing so, he attracted Lupus Boy's attention. The kid called out, in a clear, high voice, "Hey! It doesn't go to 50 million, I told you! And I got a 243,855!"

Realizing the jig was up, House limped forward. "I'm Dr. House," he admitted, shaking hands with Lupus Boy's confused and uneasy parents.

"You know him, Kevin?" asked Lupus Boy's mother. Kevin stared at House, aware that he had given up the game.

"We've talked," said House. "Nice kid. Let me get a snip of his kidney, we'll see what's cooking, and you can pack him up and be on your way. And I can have my Game Boy back."

"What we're trying to understand—" began Lupus Boy's father.

"Let me break it down for you," said House. "Right now Keith—"

"Kevin."

"Right now Kevin shows signs of incipient systemic lupus with kidney involvement. A biopsy can confirm it. If he doesn't have it, end of story; you lose a day and a couple micrometers of organ. If he has it, we can start treatment now and make sure those little red darlings take care of him for life. If we decide to be conservative—" he pronounced "conservative" as if it were synonymous with "moronic"—"and wait to see if this thing blows up again, the damage could be a lot more extensive. Now you're talking dialysis. Now we cut him open and implant a stent in his stomach so we can hook him up once a week, eight hours at a pop, for the rest of his life. And if that doesn't work, we could all be sitting here a year from now hoping someone with his blood type jams their car into a tree without messing up their internal organs. Your call."

Cameron gave him a look--Okay, but stop right there--and moved in for the kill. "A biopsy is a relatively minor procedure," she said gently. "It won't hurt Kevin, and you can be right there while we do it."

Overmatched, Lupus Boy's parents exchanged a look.

"Okay," the father said at last. "What do we do to get started?"

House left them to sign the papers and hiked on over to Oncology. He could smell Angie's room the minute the elevator doors opened; a strong tide of sandalwood and patchouli was rolling down the corridor, and as he stepped into her room, he could swear he heard sitar music.

Angie was propped luxuriously on a pile of embroidered pillows. Indian print hangings had been flung over the curtains and the bed; there were more candles in more shapes and sizes than seemed possible; any surface that wasn't covered with candles held a small brass bowl full of cones of incense. The G5 occupied most of her bedstand, but she was squinting at an episode of _The Daily Show_ on her video iPod. Seeing House in the doorway, she hit Pause and saluted.

"Hey," rasped Angie. "Welcome to the Temple of Hematological Wonders."

"Namaste," said House, prana-ing. "You seem to have made yourself comfortable."

"If I have to be here for a month, it'll be on my own terms," Angie said serenely.

House gimped over to peer at the tiny screen. "Doesn't that strain your eyes?"

"Yes," said Angie, "but it's temporary. Dad is renting me a plasma TV, with DVD and Tivo."

"You're making a good racket out of all this," said House, impressed. Angie grinned.

"I'm a spoiled only child," she reminded him, "so I'm used to asking for big things. And now that I've got cancer, I can have anything I want."

Satisfied that Angie was in good spirits, House started back down the corridor. As he passed the ward's waiting room he saw Carolyn and Scott Barton in intense conversation. It seemed stupid to interject himself in a situation that was already pretty fraught, and House wrestled briefly with temptation before unconditionally surrendering to it.

"Scott! Long time no see, bro. How's the tush—did it ever heal?" This was a reference to a drunken undergraduate misadventure that began when House challenged Scott to a game called Foam the Runway, in which participants shook their beers into a lather and sprayed it over a dirt surface, then ran and slid in the muck. Scott wound up with a piece of broken beer bottle in a highly sensitive place and had to leave the party early to have it removed by a disgruntled health center doctor. It was a sore subject.

Scott wheeled, looked him over, and turned back to Carolyn.

"What's he doing here?"

"He works here, Scott," Carolyn said, dangerously calm. "He's a doctor."

Scott sized him up. House let him take his time. It was unbecoming, petty, small-minded in the extreme to enjoy the fact that you have bedded your rival's woman, but it certainly made meetings like this easier to take.

"Greg is the one who spotted Angie's leukemia," Carolyn added. "We're lucky to have run into him."

Scott lip-farted in response.

Sensing they needed to talk alone, House thoughtfully stepped out of the room. Then he positioned himself for optimal eavesdropping.

"Do you have a place to stay?" asked Carolyn.

"I thought I'd just stay at the house," said Scott.

"No."

"Carrie--"

"There are a lot of good hotels in Princeton."

"We could ride in to the hospital together."

"Some of them are on the bus line."

"I don't see why--"

"We tried it the weekend of Angie's graduation. I almost ran my chef's knife through your ribs."

"Surely you can see that in a time of great stress, we need to pull together."

"Surely you can see that in a time of great stress, the odds of your getting stabbed are much higher."

"I don't see why we can't be adults about this."

"I still have the knife, Scott."

Loud, exasperated sigh. From where he stood, House could see Scott Barton whip out his cell phone and jab furiously at the keypad.

Carolyn emerged and smiled wanly.

"The divorce was amicable," she said. "It's the aftermath that's going to get one of us killed."

"He's booking a hotel room?"

"No," said Carolyn. "He's calling his secretary in Seattle to book him a hotel room. The rich are different from you and me. They have staff."

Scott was barking into the phone now.

"Are you going to be all right?" asked House, nodding toward the waiting room.

"Yes," said Carolyn. "I am going shopping. Angie needs some things, and it always makes me feel better to spend Scott's money."

"Melt some plastic for me."

Carolyn laughed and went back to Angie's room to check on her daughter.

Back in the conference room, Foreman and Chase were poring over a fat file. They both looked up as he entered.

"We've got a problem," said Foreman.


	16. Working for the Weekend

"She's not purging!"

"Fresh esophagal scarring, damaged tooth enamel, cardiac abnormalities, a history of emetic abuse…"

House opened Carly Forlano's file and read, "Patient denies self-induced vomiting."

"Oh, well, that's good enough for me!" Cuddy snarked. "What happened to 'Everybody lies'?"

"She went into a rehab, she's in counseling, she's taking her immunosuppressants like a good girl. She's done everything we told her to."

"And now she's trashed her second heart. The heart you almost lost your license to get for her."

"Can you let go of that for one minute? It's possible there's something else going on here."

"Oh, gee, sorry; I shouldn't keep dwelling on the fact that I almost lost my job over these high-wire acts of yours! The chairman of the board reamed me out for half an hour when he found out she was back, but let's set that aside for a moment."

"I don't think it has anything to do with purging this time."

"You'd better be right. And you'd better be able to prove it, or we could both wind up looking for new jobs."

"If we do, be sure to have them mail you your checks," advised House, his hand on the doorknob. "The people you meet on line at the Unemployment Office are lousy conversationalists."

Carly Forlano, CEO of Sonyo Cosmetics, heart transplant patient, former cutter and purger, was resting comfortably until House barged into her room and slapped her file on the bed. She looked at his face and looked away. Her eyes filled with tears.

"Had lunch yet?" House asked soliticiously. "Want something to wash it back up with?"

"I didn't do this to myself," she whispered.

"Your lips say no, but your heart says yes. The heart I bet my career on, by the way. Thanks for taking such good care of it."

"I don't purge." Carly looked him in the eyes now. "I see a therapist twice a week. I eat right, I exercise. I cut back at work."

"Then what's wrong with you?"

"I don't know." There was an edge to her voice now. "Maybe I should see a doctor?"

Returning to his office, House started to write Carly's symptoms on the whiteboard: arrhythmia, ataxia, esophagal scarring?; then stepped back. His mind was racing already; putting the words where he could see them seemed to implant them in his brain, where they spun and blurred into a whirlpool of panicky thought.

At times like these, the worst thing he could do was chase after them. Leave them alone, find something else to do. Eventually the spinning would stop, and the thoughts would sort themselves into patterns that he could learn from. It was no use trying to force the issue. He had to pull back and wait.

House went to his desk and opened the laundry drawer before he remembered that he'd come out as a drug addict again. He reached into his pocket and helped himself to a pill. Then he played Halo for awhile. It didn't seem to be working; he could not stop chewing over the same facts. He'd been so sure of Carly. Now she was back, with classic signs of bulimia. She might be telling the truth, but the possibility that he'd been duped made it hard to think of any other explanation for her current state of health.

He trailed over to the window and gazed out at the campus without really seeing anything until a series of violent motions drew his attention to Wilson's office. Scott and Carolyn Barton were back, and it looked like Scott was locked and loaded: his arms swept outward, then forward; he leaned toward Wilson and tamped a finger on the desk. Wilson had adopted the expression of profound solemnity and respect that he always used when dealing with an abrasive blowhard. It was amazing how many people fell for it. They walked away feeling they'd really gotten their point across, never suspecting that the good doctor had launched into a slanderdous indictment of their intelligence and ancestry the moment the door closed behind them.

House went to his computer and did a little keyboarding. Then he picked up his phone and made a quick call. He hung up and sat back watching the scene in Wilson's office.

The phone must have rung while Scott was in mid-shout. Wilson held up a polite finger—not the one House would have chosen, but it had a quieting effect—and spoke briefly into the receiver. Then he handed it to Scott, who stood hunched over the desk, balancing on the knuckles of his free hand. He straightened and began running that hand through his hair. He gripped a handful and pulled. Then he slammed down the receiver, barked at the other two, and stormed out of the office.

House was at Wilson's door a moment later. "How's everybody getting along?" he asked. "Where's Scotty—gone to get the pizza?"

"Insurance trouble," said Carolyn. "The hospital billing department just called and said he didn't have coverage." She looked worried. "I can't imagine there's anything wrong with his health benefits. We've never had a problem before."

"It's probably just a clerical error," said House. "Happens all the time." He sounded too sure of this. Wilson regarded him through half-closed eyes.

"They seem to happen a lot more often since someone around here learned how to access the patient database," he remarked.

Carolyn looked at Wilson quizzically, then at House. His expression radiated innocence. She gasped. "You did that?" Her brow reflecting outrage, Carolyn covered a smile. "That was mean." She glared at House, then laughed outright. "Oh, god, poor Scott, he hates bureaucratic fuck ups, they drive him crazy!" Turning to Wilson, Carolyn explained, "When he was applying to grad school his transcripts got lost. He spent the whole summer on the phone and writing letters to get it cleared up. He couldn't go on the trip to Europe his parents gave him for a graduation present! He never got over it."

Wilson looked meaningfully at House, who gazed upward as if receivng benediction. Carolyn's eyes widened. "That was you, too!" She made as if to hit him; House threw up his hands in mock defense. "He almost didn't get into Wharton because of you!"

"How'd you do it?" asked Wilson. "Come on, you're dying to tell."

"I knew a guy in the registrar's office. He needed a paper written for a class we took together," said House.

Wilson didn't believe it. "You wrote a paper? For someone else?"

"Of course not. I paid the guy who was already writing my paper to write his, too." House added, with satisfaction, "I paid for an A for my paper. The guy at the registrar's got a B-."

"That's terrible," Carolyn said, shaking her head.

"Nah. It was probably the best grade he got all year."

"Imagine if he used those vast powers for good," Wilson said to Carolyn.

"I'll just have to make sure he stays on my side," she smiled.

In the hallway, House asked, "What was that all about, anyway?"

"Scott made some calls," Carolyn said, gruffing her voice in imitation of her ex. "He found out that the best man—the _only_ man—for treating ALL is in Seattle. He wanted to pack Angie up and fly her out there tonight. Dr. Wilson pointed out that the protoccol for treating ALL is pretty standard and easy to carry out anywhere, even in a rinky-dink Ivy League teaching hospital, which only made Scott mad. He was invoking his lawyers when the phone rang."

"What a guy. Do you have that chef's knife with you, by any chance?"

"What chef's knife?"

House decided to change the subject. "Got plans for dinner?"

"I plan to open a can of soup and eat it out of the pan while it's warming up," Carolyn said promptly. "Can you do better than that?"

"Barbecue."

"I'm listening."

"Billy Bobs."

"Hmm." Carolyn pretended to weigh the alternatives. "Canned soup or pulled pork. Tough choice. I'll drive."


	17. Blues and Barbecue

Carolyn announced that she was parked at the far end of the visitors lot, which was almost in the next county, and offered to drive up to the main entrance. House would have liked to refuse, but it had been a long, achy day. He settled onto a bench and watched her walk away. Carolyn had always been reasonably slim, but there was something very toned and energetic about her now. He wondered if there were any way to ask her about it without getting into a discussion of why he didn't at least try to find a physical activity he could enjoy when there were so many people with no legs—or arms—who completed triathlons and climbed mountains. "Because they look like outtakes from a 1950s horror movie" never satisfied anyone as an answer.

The green pickup truck he'd seen in Carolyn's driveway came roaring up, Steely Dan blaring on the stereo. House embarked and nearly sat on a pair of lethal-looking spurs lying on the passenger seat.

"Christ, I almost gelded myself," he said, holding them gingerly as he settled into the seat. He felt another object under his back pockets and fished it out: a riding crop. "Is this really about horses?" he asked, "or are you into the kinky stuff now? I know a lot of rich guys who'd love to be disciplined by Mistress Carolyn."

"Where did you meet guys like that? Just throw those in the back," said Carolyn, looking for a break in traffic.

The interior of the truck was plush, but fragrant with the aroma of leather and horse byproducts. House looked for the source of the music and saw a video iPod like Angie's in a holder on the dashboard. "Did you get a mother-daughter discount?" he asked.

"I got iPods for both of us about two hours after they first came out," said Carolyn. "Then Scott got Angie the video version, and I decided I deserved one, too. It's everything I ever wished for in a music player; it's like having my own radio station that only plays my favorite songs. Steve Jobs is god. I would do him in a heartbeat, if he'd have an old bag like me. Put on whatever you want, if there's anything in there you can stand."

Carolyn had 2,000 songs on her iPod and about 1950 of them were the kind of AOR crap that was on FM radio when they were in college, but he found a few things worth listening to. Moments later, the gravel-gargling musical stylings of Joe Cocker (_Hitchcock Railway_) filled the cab.

"Nice truck," House observed. "Very Earth-friendly. How many dinosaurs does it burn per mile?"

"When they make a hybrid that can safely pull a loaded two-horse trailer, I'll be first in line with my checkbook," said Carolyn. "Anyway, we usually use Angie's car--at least we did until she went to college. But we'd never have fit all the stuff she insisted on bringing to the hospital in it."

"Angie has a car," nodded House. Carolyn sighed.

"I lost that battle," she admitted. "But I've won most of the war. She's not as spoiled as she could be. I say 'no' a lot more often than I say 'yes,' or 'I give up'."

House decided to let the plasma TV be a surprise.

"She seems like a nice kid anyway," he remarked. "Really brave about all this."

Carolyn assented, but added, "I'm not sure whether it's courage or oblivion. At her age, we don't think death applies to us. Remember some of the stupid stunts we pulled?"

House, whose life might strike the casual observer as nothing so much as a series of stupid stunts, didn't comment right away. Carolyn was trolling the streets looking for a parking space, and finally got one a block from the restaurant when an Escalade pulled out of a slot between two minivans. House held his breath as Carolyn parallel parked, but she slipped the truck into the space as if tucking a thank-you note into an envelope.

"Pretty slick," said House.

Carolyn grinned. "You should see me back the trailer. The learning curve was brutal, though--I did almost a thousand dollars worth of body damage to the rig before I figured it out. And you can still see the gouges in the high school parking lot where we practiced."

They were looking at menus when House prompted, "We were talking about teenagers and courage."

"This whole thing with Angie reminded me of one time in particular," said Carolyn. "It was summer, really hot, and we couldn't sleep, so we went to the reservoir with a couple of bottles of wine."

"We did that a lot."

"Right, but this night stuck in my mind. You took one bottle and climbed that tree on the cliff, way up above the water, and I climbed after you with the other. You went almost to the top. I lost my nerve and stayed about ten feet below you. You were singing--I can't remember what--and I was laughing and hoping the branch you were sitting on didn't break or you'd take us both down. Then your bottle went flying past and hit the grass, and then something fluttered down, and I realized it was your shorts. I looked up, and you were standing bare-assed on the branch, pounding your chest and yodeling, and then next thing I heard was a splash--you'd jumped into the water."

The waitress, approaching with their order, caught the tail end of this and gave House an appreciative once-over as she set his food in front of him.

"You're sure that was me," House commented, embarrassed.

"It wasn't Tarzan. Anyway, I didn't think for a minute that you might have killed yourself doing that. The possibility just didn't enter into my head. I didn't even wait to make sure you came up again; I got down from the tree, stripped, and jumped in with you!"

"I guess I remember different things about that night," House leered.

"The point is, we were alone, it was dark, that was not a safe place to play. A year later a high school kid drowned after jumping from that same tree. He hit his head against the cliff and was knocked unconscious, and by the time his friends realized he wasn't coming back up and jumped in after him, it was too late."

"Well, that's how nature thins the herd," House said callously. "What the hell are you doing?"

Carolyn had taken the top off her sandwich and was piling her cole slaw on the meat. "This is the way they do it down South," she explained.

"They do a lot of stupid things down South."

"They gave us barbecue," Carolyn said serenely. "Don't bite the hand that feeds you."

There was a moment of silence while they applied themselves to their sloppy meal.

"God," said Carolyn, coming up for air. "I didn't even know how hungry I was."

"You didn't get lunch?"

"I had a Power Bar."

"I'd rather suck on a doormat."

"They're not very tasty," Carolyn agreed, "but they're handy when all you want is to refuel."

She used the last bite of bread from her roll to mop up the sauce on her plate and popped it in her mouth with great relish. Watching her, a thought occurred to House.

"Didn't you have an eating disorder in high school?"

"I was anorexic before anorexia was cool," Carolyn bragged.

"What was that like?"

"What was it like." Carolyn thought for a moment. "It was like a game that got way out of hand. You keep score with the scale. First you diet, and the numbers on the scale go down. Then anytime the numbers go up, you assume you're getting fat again, so you panic and eat less. After awhile the only way you feel safe is if the numbers keep going down. Pretty soon you aren't eating much of anything."

"What about bulimia?"

Carolyn grimaced. "What about it? I never understood the finger-in-the-throat crowd. I hate throwing up so much, I'll do anything to avoid it. I spent the first three months of my pregnancy in bed lying very still so I wouldn't hurl. Anyway, I've read that it's not a good way to lose weight—it just helps you maintain. Why do you want to know?"

"I run into it now and then at the hospital," House said vaguely. "What made you decide to stop being anorexic?"

"I got tired of drinking diet soda at parties when everyone else was eating pizza. An eating disorder is a 24/7 job; you can never let your guard down for a minute. I decided to accept a few extra pounds as the price of being able to live a little."

House thought about this for a moment. "So what do you do now?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you don't look like you weigh an ounce over your college weight. Do you work out seven days a week? Do speed? Fruit fasts?"

"No, I owe this magnificent body to clean living, horseback riding, and GERD," said Carolyn, polishing off her apple sauce. She had ordered it as a substitute for french fries; House had assumed she was being virtuous, but apparently not.

"You take the purple pill?"

"Couldn't eat without it. But it doesn't cover everything. And it took almost 20 years before anyone figured out what was wrong with me—a lot of damage got done along the way."

"Twenty years!"

Carolyn shrugged. "It was the usual runaround. I had GERD before that was cool, too, so I drank lots of barium while they looked for an ulcer that wasn't there. I didn't fit the profile for gallbladder disease, so they didn't even bother with that at first. Then they thought it might be my gallbladder or GERD. Six doctors couldn't make up their minds which it was. I said 'Maybe it's GERD _and_ gallbladder disease.' So they went in after both, and guess what?"

"But you're okay now."

Another shrug. "There's still a little reflux. It scars my windpipe so I have to go in for an endoscopy every two years to have it rotor-rootered. Other than that, I'm fine. Listen, I hate to break up the party but I really have to get home. My parents are flying in first thing in the morning, and I still need to make up their bed. Greg?"

House had been staring into his water glass as if it contained missing frames from the Zapruder film. He looked up, startled.

"Oh. Yeah. Uh…check?" The waitress returned and regarded House with interest, as if imagining him naked in a tree. He gave her a knock-it-off look and his credit card. Carolyn was surprised.

"Well, thank you!"

"My pleasure," House mumbled. "You realize, though, that this means you have to put out for me."

Carolyn eyed him sardonically. "I'll get the tip," she said.

As they drove back to the hospital, House suddenly asked, "You really keep in shape by sitting on a horse?"

"I hate it when people say that," she complained. "There's a lot more to it than just sitting there."

"I guess it takes a lot of leg strength to keep from falling off," House mused.

Carolyn thumped the steering wheel emphatically. "That is exactly what you should not do," she lectured. "Riding is about being balanced, centered, moving in harmony with your horse. If you clamp on with your legs, it disrupts movement. If you grip with your hands, it disrupts movement. The whole point is to go with the flow."

"Sounds like a lot of work. What's the payoff?"

"You feel like you're flying," Carolyn said, unconsciously smiling at the memory. "No, wait—you feel like it's you that's running, effortlessly, faster and longer than you could ever run in real life. When I have a good ride, I feel like I could move mountains. I can't explain it any better than that."

"It's a good explanation," said House, and he was silent, thinking, for the rest of the drive to Princeton Plainsboro.

-0-

In his dreams that night he was running, flying, faster than he had ever run, even in his best days on the cross country team. It wasn't effortless; it was better than that. With each stride, he could feel every muscle contracting and extending, smoothly doing the job it was designed to do. There wasn't any goal in his dream, no practical point to the exercise, just the joy of moving through space without restriction or pain.

When he awoke, he knew what he needed to do about Carly Forlano.


	18. What's Eating You?

House hated to call his juniors in on a Saturday, because it meant he had to go to work on a weekend, too. On this Saturday morning, however, he didn't even wait long enough to call them from home. He wanted to get to the hospital as early as possible to start testing his new theory, which he had code-named Deep Throat.

House really hated to be wrong. Strike that: he loathed being wrong. It was intolerable. He could not rest until he'd pinpointed the place where he'd taken a wrong turn and retraced his steps to fix it. When you have been easily distracted since babyhood, you tend to miss a lot of important information, and are often mistaken for merely average or even dull minded. As a result, you depend more heavily than most on flashes of intuition, the ability to see patterns where others see chaos, and the courage to make great leaps of deductive reasoning, to stay ahead of the pack. People come to admire your ability to pull an answer out of a seemingly empty hat, but they also resent it, preferring that everyone slog their painstaking way to the answers. They are always waiting for the day you reach into the hat and pull out a snake; and they are hoping, secretly or not, that you get bitten, too.

It was hard to think of Cuddy as part of the mob, but he knew she would not be sorry to see him take one on the chin—not because she shared the crowd's resentment but because she hoped it would teach him a lesson. Ordinarily he would find her faith in his ability to learn from a mistake endearing, but the Forlano transplant was a particularly sore subject. It happened during Vogler's brief but sinister reign, when Cuddy came as close to abandoning her principles and behaved as cravenly as he'd ever seen her in an effort to appease that unappeasable toad and keep his money at Princeton-Plainsboro. True, she regrew her backbone in time to tell Vogler to take his money and shove it. But before she came to her senses she forced House to lie to her face, just to impress a man who thought they were both worse than useless anyway. If Vogler hadn't been sitting there daring her to let him off the hook, she'd have read the situation in House's face and never pressed him on the details. Instead, she made him put his career on the line, and since his job was pretty much all he had at the time, that was tantamount to putting his life on the line as well.

Even then, House didn't mind lying for Carly Forlano. For one thing, she was a young woman with a lot to live for who would have been dead in a month if he hadn't. For another, she aroused a certain fellow feeling in him. House knew a little about the psychic storms that caused a woman to whittle away at her thighs with razor blades and carry a bottle of Ipecac in her purse. He suspected they were similar to the angry helplessness that drove a man to wash down opiates with scotch. And he certainly wanted to go on living, however uncomfortable his life looked to others.

So he went out on a limb for her, and now it appeared he was wrong about her after all. Cuddy could overlook many things, but throwing away a precious donor heart on a patient who was systematically killing herself was too egregious a waste even for her. He'd be allowed to keep his job, but she would be even less likely than before to back him up or look the other way, and given the way he practiced medicine, he needed her to be willing to do both—sometimes simultaneously—at least once a month.

Carly's breakfast tray was still sitting on her bed table when House strode into her room. "Good morning!" he boomed, lifting the covers from the plates and noting the left overs. "Sleep well? How were the eggs this morning—ah, you didn't eat them. That's probably a smart move. What meds are you taking these days?"

"It's all in my chart," Carly said defensively.

"Yes, there's a nice short list here. They're all prescription drugs. What else do you take?"

"I gave everything to the nurse, dosages and everything."

"There's been some confusion about this question lately, so let me rephrase it: What. Drugs. Do. You. Take. Prescription, over-the-counter, bought on a street corner from a 12-year-old pimp. All of it. Everything. The good, the bad, the Tylenol PM. Give."

Taken aback, Carly made an earnest effort to remember. "Uh, extra-strength Tylenol, for headaches; a couple times a week. Midol, two or three days once a month. Um, I had a cold a month ago, so TheraFlu for a couple of days. Oh, and Prilosec."

"Over the counter Prilosec."

"Yes. I don't know the dose offhand."

"How many times a week do you take it?"

"Depends on what kind of week we're having at work," Carly said ruefully. "When it's really hopping, a couple times a day."

"You're only supposed to take it once a day," said House. "Sometimes you take more?"

"Yes," Carly said guardedly. "Is that a problem?"

"No. Yes. Has your doctor ever suggested putting you on something stronger, like Nexium?"

"I haven't talked to my doctor about this."

"You're in enough pain to double up on acid blockers and you don't talk to your doctor about it?"

"It's only heartburn," Carly pleaded, but House was already halfway down the hall and headed for the conference room. Once there, he draw a dramatic line through the phrase "esophagal scarring," wrote "GERD" in red marker, and circled it, twice. Then he made three phonecalls.

No one was happy to hear from him. Foreman agreed to make an appearance, but made it clear he was humoring him. Chase was downright sulky—House suspected he was still in bed, and not alone. But Cameron was the only one who put up an argument.

"Can't this wait until Monday?" she demanded.

"What kind of doctor asks a question like that when a life is at stake?"

"Is she dying?"

"Aren't we all?"

Silence.

"I want to deal with this now, while she's still freshly sick," whined House. "If we wait until Monday, she might get better and go home."

"I know a doctor who used to consider that a successful resolution," Cameron recalled. Now it was House's turn to be silent. She sighed. "All right. I'll be there in about an hour."

"Atta girl."

But he could not relax. He stumped around his office, looking for a distraction. Everything he had suddenly seemed uninspiring. He needed some new toys.

House popped a pill and leaned on his cane for a moment, considering his options. Then he left his office and headed for Oncology.

Angie Barton was not alone; Nate was stretched out on the bed with her, and both were listening intently as two deliverymen explained the intricate workings of the very large plasma screen TV that had been installed at the far end of the room. Seeing House in the doorway, dumbstruck with admiration, Angie gave him a gleeful smile and held up a DVD copy of Tim Burton's _Corpse Bride_.

Twenty minutes later Foreman stuck his head into the room. "Chase and I've been downstairs for half an hour," he fibbed. Onscreen, the Corpse Bride's eye popped out and a green maggot poked its head out of the empty socket.

"Damn." Without taking his eyes off the TV, Foreman felt his way to a chair and sat down.

Chase appeared ten minutes later, took in the scene without comment, and brought a chair in for himself.

The movie was almost over when Cameron finally hunted them down. She drew a sharp breath: "I can't believe you made us come in on a Saturday just to sit here—" but her admonition was drowned in a chorus of indignant shushing. Defeated, she crossed her arms and leaned into a corner to watch the end.

"My god, it's after eleven!" House shouted as the credits rolled. "Can't you people be on time for anything?" The fellows, backs stiff with wounded innocence, left the room en masse. They didn't notice, until they'd reached the conference room, that their mentor had failed to follow them.

House had spotted Carolyn coming down the hall, accompanied by an elderly couple he immediately recognized as her parents. The Campbells were greyer and more wrinkled since he'd last seen them, and George Campbell, who had impressed young Greg House as a mild-mannered bull of a man who could break a lanky teenager in half if provoked, seemed to have shrunk. Gracie Campbell also was smaller than he remembered.

She was still a noisy little dynamo, though, and didn't hesitate to rush right up to House and give him an eye-popping hug. "Gregory House!" she cried, and gave him an extra squeeze before releasing him. "Look at you, all grown up and distinguished! but where's your white coat? I want to see you in your doctor's coat!"

House actually felt himself grinning sheepishly. Gracie Campbell had packed a lot of groceries into his scrawny frame on his frequent visits to her home, and teased and fussed over him as if he were one of her own. House knew this was in part an attempt to diffuse any dangerous sex appeal he might have for Gracie's daughter, but he had enjoyed it anyway.

Angie's voice rang out, busting up the party. "Grandma!"

"Oh, there's my baby," said Gracie. "I'd better go in. We'll catch up later, promise?" She squeezed his hand and hurried away, followed by George, who gave House a half smile in passing. Maybe he was glad to see House, too. Or maybe he was thinking that Carolyn had made a narrow escape.

House turned to ask Carolyn for her opinion, but she was staring down the hall, her shoulders sagging.

"Shit, it's the outlaws," she muttered. Scott Barton was striding impatiently toward them, trailed by an another older couple whom House assumed were his parents.

"Are you folks here, too?" Scott asked irritably. "It's going to get crowded in there." He whipped out his cell phone and assaulted the keypad with both thumbs, then turned his back on them.

"Angie likes a crowd," Carolyn said, in a false hearty tone, before turning to her ex-inlaws. "Bill. Marcy."

"Carolyn." Marcy Barton was tall, thin, well-dressed, and apparently afflicted with a pole up her colon; she bent stiffly toward Carolyn and kissed the air above her cheek. "It's good to see you." An obvious lie. "You look positively haggard."

"You, too," Carolyn said warmly. Marcy Barton straightened and peered down her nose at House. "This is Dr. House," said Carolyn. "Greg, Angie's grandmother, Marcy, and her grandfather, Bill."

Bill Barton leaned forward and shook hands amiably enough. Marcy kept her hands on her purse as she completed her inspection.

"I would have expected a doctor to at least shave," she observed, as if talking behind his back.

"Things don't always turn out the way you expect," House answered genially. "For example: did you come here in a cab?"

Marcy looked puzzled. "Yes."

"Well, there you go," said House. "I would have expected you to arrive on a—ow!"

"Sorry," said Carolyn—another obvious lie—and lifted her heel from his toe. "Marcy, Bill, why don't you go on in. I'll stay out here so there's enough room for everyone.

"For god's sake, don't rattle her cage," she hissed when they were alone. "She'll give Angie knock-out drops and smuggle her back to St. Louis in that giant tote back of hers."

"How could you marry into that?" House wondered, staring after the Bartons.

"They were perfectly pleasant at first," Carolyn said sadly. "They even insisted that I call them Mom and Dad. The divorce ended all that. Scott was the one who cheated, but he was willing to try to make the marriage work and I wasn't, so I'm the bad guy."

"'The men that women marry/And why they marry them, will always be/A marvel and a mystery to the world'," House intoned.

Carolyn was impressed. "Who said that?"

"You were standing right there," House said modestly. "You heard it. I said it." And he left her to referee the happy family gathering in her daughter's sickroom.

(Longfellow said it first.)


	19. Saturday Night Fever

The fellows were sitting around the conference table critiquing _Corpse Bride_ when House joined them.

"That was one weird ass movie," Chase commented. He pronounced it "wehrd ahss."

"Aaaass," coached House, flattening the "a" until it blatted painfully in his own ears. "You've been in this country for two years, for Christ's sake; talk like a Merikun."

He strode to the whiteboard and scrawled "Deep Throat" across the top. He could actually hear Cameron's eyes roll. "All right! Let's review."

"How did they know she had esophagal scarring?" Foreman wanted to know. "You don't get that from using a tongue depressor."

"Cuddy was on a fishing expedition. She ordered an endoscopy. Probably thought she'd find a bottle of Ipecac down there while she was at it." House fixed his eyes on the Australian. "She should have sent in a proven talent like Chase. Or has she already had you do a cavity search?"

Chase sighed and looked out the window.

"So. GERD explains the scarring. The tooth enamel damage is a leftover from her bad old days. Now, what's up with her new heart?"

They launched into a well-rehearsed routine. House found himself detaching from what they were saying to observe their interaction. In some ways it hadn't changed much since their first days together: Foreman still disliked zebras, Chase still hung back until he had something spectacular to say, Cameron was still the teacher's pet who raises her hand at every question. But there were differences, too. Chase was more likely to stay with the discussion instead of lapsing into inattention. Foreman was more open to offbeat possibilities—not quite zebras, but at least the occasional horse of a different color. He was positing one right now, in fact.

"She was in China three months ago. Maybe she picked up some kind of bug, a protozoan, there."

"She only visited the major cities," Chase objected. "Anyway, wouldn't the bloods have picked that up?"

"Even the major cities in Asia have dicey water supplies," Foreman said. "And no one ran her bloods under a microscope. Remember the last time we let a computer do all the thinking for us?"

Even Cameron had learned to lose an argument without taking it personally. Well, almost. When House dismissed her theory that Carly was selenium deficient by snapping "She's a perfume executive, not a racehorse," there was a bump of hurt silence. Violation of Relationship Rule No. 1489: Ex-boyfriends forever forfeit their right to be sarcastic to their former girlfriends.

The discussion rambled on. They'd been exposed to his style of deductive reasoning for so long they could almost proceed without him. In six months they would all be flying solo, on their way to new jobs, new locations, new challenges. He would stay here and toilet train another set of fellows. There was nothing for him to look forward to but a series of tedious interviews with a bunch of new-minted know-it-all baby doctors. They would come in trying to impress him, throwing their new-found expertise around, only to piddle on the floor every time he looked at them cross-eyed.

Why did things always have to change?

Foreman was back on protozoa, which meant the discussion had begun to double back on itself. Time to step in and hand out homework.

"Okay, let's get some exercise. Chase, you're good at going through her personal things, you take her apartment. Foreman, you toss the corner office. Cameron, get some more blood and run it under a microscope. And please see me in my office before you go." Foreman and Chase exchanged a look, and left reluctantly.

House hobbled over to his desk, suddenly aware that his leg was throbbing, and dosed himself. Cameron sat opposite him, waiting.

"Lupus Boy," said House, not looking at her. "What's the status?"

"The biopsy pretty much confirmed Stage II nephritis," she reported. "I talked to the parents. We're going to start him on corticosteroids and monitor him closely. I referred them to Messingill for follow-up. He can go home as soon as you sign the discharge papers."

"What discharge papers?"

"The ones in your In box."

House cast about his desk for something resembling a box. Cameron reached past him to a black plastic tray stacked with papers, picked up the sheaf sitting on the top, and handed it to him. House made an elaborate show of reading it.

"How's the job hunt going?" he asked, still not looking at her.

Cameron didn't seem surprised. "Pretty good. There are a couple of leads worth following up. I'm getting some feelers from OSU."

"Watch out for those feelers," House joked lamely. "Especially if they're coming from dirty old men." Silence as he signed Lupus Boy's discharge papers. Then: "When you need a letter of recommendation, let me know."

"Thanks."

"You always hope, when you start something at work, that it won't get weird," House commented. "It got weird, didn't it?"

Cameron gave him a half-smile. "It was pretty weird right from the start," she said.

Left alone with Carly Forlano's dictionary-sized file, House found he'd run out of enthusiasm for the hunt. He felt a familiar sense of dread when he considered the task ahead: hours of deciphering doctor handwriting, poring over details, trying to tease out the data that would fit together and reveal the explanation. A line from the novel Catch-22 drifted through his mind: "I used to get a big kick out of saving people's lives. Now I wonder what the hell's the point, since they all have to die anyway."

He shook the thought away. He checked his watch. Lunchtime was almost over, and he hadn't even had breakfast yet. House considered going down to the cafeteria for a sandwich, but that meant running the risk of seeing someone he knew, and he didn't feel like talking to anyone. He limped down to the staff lounge and raided the vending machines, assembling a balanced meal of ramen noodles, peanuts, corn chips, two Snickers bars, and a Coke. He ate one of the candy bars on the way back to his office, and by the time he'd set out his picnic, the sugar rush had kicked in and he felt ready for work.

Carly Forlano's medical history of the past three years unfolded before him, a veritable tossed salad of the mundane—yeast infections, Pap smears, flu symptoms—and the highly specialized, most of it related to her transplant. Every entry in her chart was accompanied by the boring statistics that most people take for granted: blood pressure, weight, temperature, heart rate. House had learned to pay close attention to the boring stuff, as it was often the weak seam where the real problem began to poke through. But it was a tedious business, and he made an effort to keep his mind from wandering as he sifted through the files.

He was so absorbed in this process that he didn't see Cameron return until she stood right over him and spoke.

"Is this all you had for lunch?" she asked, wrinkling her nose at the jumble of empty wrappers on his desk.

"No," said House, going back to his data. "I also had _coq au vin_ with wild rice and a salad of mixed spring greens with goat cheese and pecans, but the wait staff already cleared my tray."

Cameron dropped a lab slip on his desk. "I did the slides," she said. "No bugs in that blood."

House nodded; he hadn't really expected her to find any.

Cameron was still worrying about him. "You're going to end up being here all night, aren't you?"

"I might," said House absently, "but I plan on sleeping late tomorrow; I've already decided not to go to church."

She lingered. "If there's anything else I can do—"

House shook his head, still reading, and flapped a dismissing hand at her. "Go. Have a Saturday night. Or stay home and polish that resume. And be here on time Monday."

Cameron opened her mouth as if to say something else, thought better of it, and backed toward the door. "Bye then."

House didn't answer. He was jotting down notes.

Foreman checked in by phone about an hour later. "Nothing here but an In box the size of Rhode Island, full to the top," he reported. "And an email In box with 300 messages since Thursday, most of them labeled 'Urgent'."

"You broke into her email account?"

"It was no big deal. She keeps her password on a piece of paper under her keyboard."

"Lemme guess: does it have anything to do with American Idol?"

"Close," laughed Foreman. "Survivor."

House was quiet; he was looking at his notes, where a trend was emerging.

"You still there?"

"Yeah. Okay. Is that all?"

"She gets a lot of spam about weight loss methods," Foreman said.

"Everyone gets those. She probably gets a lot of spam about penis extenders, too. Does it look like she responds to them?"

"To the weight loss ones or the penis extenders?"

"Either one."

"No."

"Okay, now we know two things; she's not buying gelcaps full of cornstarch, and she's not a man. Good work. Go home and enjoy your weekend. See you Monday."

An hour later he closed the folder and set it aside. He felt the way he had as a kid when, piecing together one of those 5,000-piece puzzles, he completed the frame. Now all he had to do was fill in the middle. Foreman and Cameron had already come up empty—where the hell was Chase? How long did it take to rifle a single woman's apartment?

Tired but restless, House cast about for ways to kill time. Halo didn't do it. Neither did balancing the Magic 8-Ball on a saucer on the tip of his cane. He tried to watch TV, but after experiencing the miracle of plasma resolution, he could not abide the picture on the ancient set in his office. He decided to visit Angie Barton, see if he could persuade her to watch something other than the Cartoon Network.

House noticed a difference as soon as he arrived on Oncology: the essence of the bazaar was gone. Instead of sandalwood, he detected industrial-strength disinfectant, with strong iodine notes.

"God," he said, as he entered Angie's room, "what happened in here? It smells like a hospital!"

Angie didn't look up from the TV screen. "The nurses made Mom take all the incense and stuff home," she muttered bitterly. "They said the smell was bothering the other patients. It made the chemo freaks hork or something."

House took a closer look at her. "Probably a good idea to maintain good relations with the neighbors, seeing as you're going to be here for awhile."

Stoney faced, Angie stared at the TV.

"What's the matter, Princess?" House needled. "Won't Daddy get you a puppy?"

Angie threw one of her ornate pillows at him. "Fuck you."

It was a half-hearted gesture, House saw that. Angie wasn't herself. He picked up her chart. "Your temperature is down," he noted. Angie started blinking hard. "Are you feeling better?"

"Yeah, I'm feeling better," Angie said hotly. "Isn't that great? I'm feeling so much better, Dr. Wilson says I can start treatment on Monday! I come in here sick, and you make me better so you can make me sick again. And in a week or two, I'll be sick and bald!" Her face quivered, but as yet there were no tears.

"Sucks to be you," House agreed. "On the other hand, with any luck you'll come out of this with hair and your health. Some of the people on this ward would give an arm and a leg for that. Come to think of it, some of them have given an arm and a leg, and they're still gonna die."

Angie muttered something under her breath.

"Come again?"

"Have you seen my neighbors?" she demanded loudly. "They look like, like mummies, or Auschwitz victims or something--all skinny and white with their eyes shut and their mouths open and hoses stuck everywhere. I hate being here! It gives me the creeps just knowing they're all around me!" A few tears got loose and wandered down her cheeks.

So the first inklings of mortality had impinged on Ms. Barton's blithe consciousness. Welcome to adulthood, kid, House thought. From here on, the feeling that time is running out will take over more and more of your waking thoughts. Still, there was no need to rub it in. Wilson could see her just as easily on Pediatrics.

"The problem with you is, you're sheltered and spoiled," House said heartlessly. "It'll do you good to stay here, see how the other half lives."

"You're spoiled, too," Angie shot back. "The nurses told me your boss spoils you. You don't do your work and you're mean to everyone, and she lets you get away with it."

"Did they say why she lets me get away with it?" House asked, really curious. He often wondered what theories his co-workers had formulated for his ability to be outrageous with apparent impunity.

"They don't know. They said it was the one thing they couldn't figure out. But they told me to watch out for you, because you steal fruit from get-well baskets and make your patients cry."

"I was raised by wolves. What's your excuse?"

Angie made her eyes big and soulful. "I'm a child from a broken home."

House snorted. There actually was a fruit basket on the counter. He leaned over and helped himself to an apple. "You're a piece of work," he commented, through a mouthful of fruit. "Where did your mother find you, the dumpster behind the Improv?"

"She's my mother, all right," Angie said darkly. "Don't let her fool you. She laughs and jokes and acts really nice, but she can be a real bitch if you piss her off."

"Duly noted. Where is your mother, anyway? And the Nanas and the Papas?"

"They all went to dinner," Angie said, adding flippantly, "Nobody here but us terminal cases."

House didn't laugh. "Angie," he said. "I know you're trying to put up a brave front, and I also know you're scared and mad, and I don't blame you. What happened to you is rotten. It's Saturday night. A pretty girl like you should be out partying and driving boys crazy, not sitting in a hospital bed with nobody to talk to but a spoiled mean doctor who steals your food."

The girl glared at him, daring him to go on. But House hadn't been afraid of a 19-year-old girl since he was a 19-year-old boy, and continued.

"You've got a long road ahead of you. There are going to be setbacks before it's over. You might as well know that and let yourself be sad about it now. Get it out of your system. So I'll tell you what: I'll let you cry on my shoulder. Not literally," he added hastily, "but if you want some company while you bawl about this crappy disease and the crappy things we're gonna do to you to treat it, I'll sit with you while you do it, just this once."

The tears were already flowing. Angie crossed her arms over her breast, bent over, and sobbed. House silently handed her Kleenex. Passing nurses looked in and, assuming that that awful Dr. House had made the poor child cry, glared at him. He glared back. He had a reputation to protect.

-0-

When he got back to his office, Chase was there waiting, a small paper packet on the desk in front of him.

"Inspector Clouseau!" said House, "I knew I could count on you to get the real shit. Whatta ya got there, crack? More crystal meth?"

Wordlessly, Chase pushed the packet at him. House picked it up and read the label. He felt his core temperature drop by several degrees.

"Well," he said tiredly. "I guess there's more than one way to break a heart."


	20. A Heart to Heart Talk

A few years earlier, House witnessed an emotional farewell between Wilson and a patient he'd successfully treated for malignant fibrous histiocytoma. House watched closely as the man gripped Wilson's hand in both of his own, thanked him in a choked voice, then smothered him in a hug that would have knocked a moose off its feet. More hand-shaking, then a slap on the back so vigorous House half expected Wilson to expel an organ. Satisfied at last that he had registered his gratitude, the patient left, shoulders back, head high, the picture of a man with a new lease on life.

"Well," said House, ambling over to where Wilson was recovering, "that was beautiful. Will you be seeing each other again?"

Wilson's mouth was uncharacteristically tight. "I haven't the slightest doubt of it," he said. "He reeks of cigarette smoke. He probably lit up the minute he walked out the door."

Not that House needed more proof of a patient's ability to narrowly escape medical disaster and go right back to the behaviors that precipitated the crisis. The cirrhosis patient who went on draining a case of beer every weekend, the parents of the diabetic who didn't see how a little ice cream now and then could hurt him, the kid with Hep C who flashed a brand-new homemade tattoo at the follow-up exam—all and more had passed under his exasperated eyes, all had had the benefit of his undiluted opinion of their intelligence and health habits, and all had listened to his rantings, cow-eyed and obedient, and presumably gone off to continue doing stupid things until they died of entirely preventable causes. The words to a song from _My Fair Lady_ summed it up: "She will beg you for advice, your reply will be concise, and she'll listen very nicely, then go out and do precisely what she wants." House hated Broadway music and resented Cuddy for forcing him into regular proximity with these morons. "Clinic hours make us better doctors," she said, or perhaps he misheard her and what she really said was "bitter doctors." In which case it was working beautifully.

To be fair, maybe no one had thought to specifically warn Carly Forlano not to stress her donated heart by taking an herbal stimulant that had been banned by the FDA after it was implicated in dozens of sudden deaths, heart attacks, strokes, and seizures, many involving persons even younger than her. Or maybe she was unaware that the herb _ma huang_ was also known as ephedra, the active ingredient in preparations, like fenphen, that were only mediocre at promoting weight loss and stamina but did a great job of inducing hypertension, tachycardia, and arrhthymia.

Even if she did know that ephedra had been involved in the deaths of high-profile athletes, it was easy to see how the label on the packet Chase found in her apartment might give her a false sense of security. Translated from Chinese, it read:

"Thus while non-ancient-pounds!"

"All natural, healthy diet!"

"Slimming your money or insurance card!"

The problem was, he couldn't just march into her room and demand an explanation for the packet; it would lead to unnecessary questions. He would have to find a workaround before he could confront Carly.

A series of misunderstandings with patients who abruptly denied the diagnostics team further access to their veins had taught House and his fellows to take a little extra blood while they still could. Entering the lab, House found a vial neatly labled "Carly Forlano" right in the rack where Cameron had left it. He set up the test for ephedra.

House decided to take care of another piece of business while waiting for the results. Wilson's phone rang eleven times before he answered, sounding a little out of it.

"Listen, there's something I need you to do," House said, without preamble. "Call in an authorization to move Angie Barton to Pediatrics, the sooner the better."

"Right now?"

"No, of course not right now," House said impatiently. "It's Saturday night, the union would have a cow. But first thing tomorrow morning."

"Am I to know why?"

House essayed Valley Girl inflection. "Oncology is full of creepy sick people. It freaks her OUT."

"But it's also a cleaner environment. Do you know what you find in Pediatrics? Children. Dirty, germy, runny-nosed little children, putting their filthy, sticky hands all over my immunocompromised leukemia patients."

"It's a shame you didn't have kids with any of your wives," House observed. "The way you talk about them, I think you would have made a swell dad."

"I'll move Angie. But that gives me the right to ask how your date with her mother went."

"What date?"

"Half the hospital saw you ride off in her big-ass truck." Wilson put an Appalachian drawl on "truck." "Either you've taken up duck hunting or you were on a date."

"It wasn't a date. It was dinner with an old friend."

"You don't have old friends," Wilson reminded him. "You have ex-lovers and bitter enemies. Some are both."

"Boy, you're cranky," said House. "Did I get you up?"

"In a manner of speaking."

"What're you doing in bed at nine o'clock ?" Wilson let him figure that out for himself. "Ohhhh."

"Yeah."

"Now we're really dishing. Who is she? Debbie in Billing or Trisha in Maternity?"

"Well, it's been great talking to you..."

"I bet it's Trisha. You like big boobs, but you like the pissy ones even more."

"Good night, House."

"Good night, Wilson. Sorry I, uh, interrupted."

"I'll do the same for you sometime," Wilson promised, and hung up.

Test completed, results in hand, House took the elevator to Cardiology. It was after ten. The nursing staff was huddled behind the station laughing at a quiz in _Cosmopolitan_. House made his way to Carly's room unchallenged.

"When my boss told me you were back because you'd blown out your second heart from puking, I told her she was mistaken. 'That's ridiculous,' I said. 'The woman narrowly escaped death by Ipecac cocktail. She would never be stupid enough to try another diet trick known to cause heart damage'. Boy, is my face red." He slapped the printout from the lab on her bedtable.

Carly said nothing.

"I'm going over your history," said House, "and I notice a funny thing. Right after the transplant, you gained back all the weight you lost in the hospital. Then you packed on another ten pounds—pounds you needed, by the way. For nine months your weight stays the same. Three months ago you take a trip to China, and after that the pounds just melt away. 'What's her secret?', I ask myself. I also notice that your blood pressure was going up and up. On a hunch, I run a blood test and got a nice strong positive for ephedra. Excuse me, the ancient Chinese medicinal herb _ma huang_. Everyone knows ephedra is bad, but an ancient Chinese herb just has to be safe and effective, right? Especially if you buy it in a dusty old shop in Beijing from a guy with a grey beard and a sixth-grade education. What does the best cardiologist in New Jersey know? He's a slave to Western medicine."

Carly's eyes were now livid with hate. He was getting through to her.

"I'm all for patients exploring their options, Carly, but for you, freestyling without a doctor's supervision is stupid beyond belief. You didn't read the fine print on the release papers for the transplant? 'One per customer.' You've had your second chance. No transplant committee in the developed world would put you on a list for a new set of tonsils now."

"You don't understand," she whispered. "Looks are everything in my business. I can't afford to undercut the image. I can't afford to be fat."

"Then you can't afford this job," House said bluntly. "You can slice this any way you want, the fact is you're killing yourself to run that company. You're 34 years old, and you're already on a fast track for a heart attack or stroke because you don't want to go up a dress size."

"I don't know how to do anything else," Carly pleaded.

"No transferrable skills? Come on. I don't believe it. But even if it's true, you're rich; you won't starve. It's about time you started your next career anyway. And make sure this one isn't all about making women feel self-conscious about their looks. Seems to inspire a lot of idiotic behavior."

-0-

"So she wasn't puking," said Foreman.

"No," said House, holding out his hand. Foreman counted out two twenties and a ten.

"But she was doing something equally brainless to lose weight," Chase reminded them, intercepting the money and holding his hand out at House.

"All my cash is in the vending machines," said House. "I'll have to owe you."

"I can't believe someone who already almost died once would put herself at risk like that," Cameron said wonderingly.

"It's a mental obsession," House lectured. "A game that gets out of hand. The next thing you know, it's controlling you. And it won't let go of you until you made a decision to let go of the game. Is that a pudding cup?"

Cameron nodded. House held out his hand. Cameron fished around in her tote bag.

"So what's the prognosis?" asked Foreman.

"That's up to Carly," shrugged House, opening his pudding cup. "We can fix her heart. We can't fix her head. Hey, fudge swirl—sweet."

Meeting over, pudding cups eaten, the fellows wandered off and House settled into his office chair. Carly had been handed off to the cardiologists; there was no new case. This was a good time to get some paperwork done, read some medical journals, catch up on sleep…he dozed.

"YEAH, HI, IT'S ME. YEAH, I'M AT PRINCETON PLAINSBORO. NO, NO, THAT'S FINE, I'M STILL SETTLING IN, I GOT FUCK-ALL TO DO YET, LET'S TALK."

House jerked awake. The voice wasn't just loud, it was penetrating, coming right through the wall like it was made of gauze.

"SO ELAINE TELL YOU HOW I GOT SCREWED BY THE DEALERSHIP? I COULDN'T BELIEVE IT. BRAND NEW BEEMER, I TAKE IT IN FOR SERVICE, GUY SAYS IT NEEDS BRAKE WORK. BRAKE WORK! FUCK ME, I SAY, THOSE BRAKES DON'T EVEN HAVE A HUNNERT MILES ON 'EM! I MEAN, $80,000 FOR THIS PIECE OF SHIT AND ALREADY IT NEEDS BRAKE WORK? FUCK!"

Cuddy entered in time to hear the last words and looked around to see who was screaming at House this time. Seeing no one, she stared at the wall, astonished.

"HE GOES, THE GUY GOES, 'WELL, YOU CAN DO WHATEVER YOU WANT, BUT I WOULDN'T DRIVE NEXT DOOR WITH THOSE BRAKES.' CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS SHIT?"

House gestured vigorously at the wall. "_Can_ you believe this shit?" he asked her.

"SO I CALL THE ASSHOLE WHO SOLD ME THE CAR, AND HE SAYS HE'S NOT AUTHORIZED TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT. SHIT! I SAY, 'YOU WERE AUTHORIZED TO SELL ME THIS HUNK OF CRAP, AND IF YOU DON'T CALL SERVICE RIGHT NOW AND TELL 'EM THE BRAKE WORK IS ON THE HOUSE, I'M AUTHORIZED TO KICK YOUR ASS."

"I can't work like this," said House.

"Well, fortunately you won't have to," said Cuddy. "I have a new patient for you, and this one might involve some traveling."


	21. Star Power

Dr. Loud had an apparently inexhaustible list of phone buddies eager to hear about his car troubles, so Cuddy invited House to her office to discuss the new case. This exposed a gap in protocol, as House rarely entered her office unless it was to ream or be reamed. They had standard choreography for either occasion. If it was the former, Cuddy would be at her desk, and House would storm in and stand over her in a threatening manner. If the latter, Cuddy would lead the way, her back stiff with irritation and anxiety, and take her place behind her desk while House stood in the middle of the carpet trying to think up alibis and diversionary tactics.

They had no routine for a cordial discussion about a work-related matter, so there was an awkwardness between them as they walked, more or less companionably, to the administrative wing. After a moment of "apres vous, mon cher Gaston" at the door to her office, they settled into the matching leather couches.

Cuddy led off. "First of all, the patient has requested the utmost confidentiality on the part of everyone involved in his care. New York-Presbytarian has agreed, and has made its staff sign confidentiality agreements in which it is explicitly stated that violations will result in automatic dismissal. They have asked us to do the same. I know how much signing a piece of paper and the threat of being fired mean to you, so let me add my own special warning: If you blab one word about this case to anyone, I will castrate you with pinking shears and hang your naughty bits in Lecture Hall D as a warning to others. Do I make myself clear?"

Impressed with the originality if not the substance of the threat, House signed the agreement.

"Thank you," said Cuddy. "Now, meet your new patient." She handed over a bulging file.

House's jaw dropped as he registered the patient's name. He looked up at Cuddy with astonishment. She was still styling Big Bad Boss Lady Bee-otch, but her posture was electric with excitement.

"My idol," said House, awestruck. "I've wanted to shake his hand since I was 16, and now I'm going to be on first-name basis with his kidneys. Or—what's wrong with him?"

"Read his file and tell me," sighed Cuddy. "The poor man has been through every test they can think of, and still no clues."

House read silently for a few minutes. The main symptom was an overactive bladder characterized by urinary frequency and, in the past month, some incontinence. He felt a pang of sympathy. One of the world's great celebrities, widely acclaimed as a master of his craft, married to a woman half his age, and he had to wear a diaper. House had recently experienced increased urinary frequency himself. Stacy had called him The Camel, and not always kindly, because he could drive for eight hours without having to stop at a rest station and expected her to be able to do the same. Now he couldn't get through an eight-hour sleep without waking at least once to drain the pipes. In his case it was just another sign of aging--his system was beginning to lose its youthful elasticity, that's all--but it was another small humiliation on top of the large ones that already darkened his life.

Enough about his own problems. The patient's symptoms were likely the result of nerve damage, but what caused the damage? The most common causes are childbirth, infections of the brain or spine, diabetes, stroke, accidents that injure the brain or spinal cord, multiple sclerosis, and heavy metal poisoning. As a male nearing 70, the patient was safe from the first cause. There was no sign of diabetes or stroke. He was not widely known as a risktaker who might have injured himself. He had not been tested for MS or heavy metals, but the former is almost always diagnosed before 50 and the latter was just too big a stretch to consider. Unless… House had already turned in one devoted wife for poisoning her husband...

That left infection, but there were dozens of possibilities, ranging from bactertial to viral to parasitical. It looked like New York-Presbyterian had tested for the most obvious culprits and come up empty. He was going to have to do some digging into the guy's day-to-day activities to have any hope of identifying the obscure ones. Not only would this be fun, it was potentially profitable; he could sell his notes to _People_ magazine and retire. He'd have to spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder for Cuddy, but it might be worth it if it meant never spending another day in an examining room with lunkheads who did not see a link between a diet of triple bacon cheeseburgers and their cholesterol count.

"We'll want to run some of these tests all over again," House mused. "When does he get here?"

"He doesn't," said Cuddy. "You're going to him."

"To New York? Why?"

"He's an eccentric," Cuddy shrugged. "He hates leaving Manhattan. He feels comfortable where he is, close to his family and his GP."

"But we've got all these neat toys," House whined. "I wanted to try out the new CT scanner."

"They have one in New York," Cuddy said firmly. "This isn't negotiable, House."

"It's a long commute."

"Yeah. That's another thing. His condition is deteriorating; you'll want to be available round the clock. New York-Pres will pay to put you up at the Princeton Club."

"Now I know you're tripping. You're going to throw me into a place with a bar and a bunch of Ivy League assholes, and expect me to behave myself? I'll get thrown out the first night for profaning the alma mater."

"Should I call New York-Pres and tell them you're unavailable to meet with this patient?"

There was a brief contest of blue-eyed stares. In the end, celebrity fever won out, as Cuddy knew it would.

"Fine. Tell them I'm on my way. But I'll expect a month off from clinic duty in lieu of compensatory time."

"A week," said Cuddy, smiling. "You're so starstruck, you'd do extra time just to see this guy in a hospital gown, and everybody knows it."

"I'm gonna have him autograph the right side of my ass," House decided. "Want me to get him to sign the left side for you? You can't put it in a frame, but I'll let you kiss it once in awhile."

And he left hastily, before she could say anything else.

-0-

Carolyn was a huge fan of his new patient, House remembered. He couldn't tell her who it was, but it would be almost as much fun to tease her with a good mystery as to tell her outright that he was treating one of her favorite stars. Barely limping, he headed for Angie's new room in Pediatrics.

But Angie was alone, sitting up in bed, wide-eyed as a baby owl. "I got a port today!" she announced, and giggled.

House looked at her chart. Angie had misunderstood Wilson's instructions; she wasn't to start treatment today, she had had surgery to implant a port in her chest wall for chemotherapy, to save wear and tear on her veins. She had been given sodium thiopental in a dose calculated to cause "conscious sedation"; the patient was technically awake and responsive, although they rarely remembered anything once the drug entered their system. Better known as sodium pentothal or "truth serum," the drug is a barbituate, and as such it decreases higher cortical brain functioning. Since lying is more complex that the truth, a patient under the influence will tend to be very candid when asked a direct question.

"Where's your mom?" asked House.

"She took Daddy out of the room. I think he was going to faint," Angie said promptly.

Gratified by the image of Scott Barton in a swoon, House suggested, "Maybe she took him back to his hotel."

"He's not at the hotel anymore," said Angie. "He's staying at our house."

This was an unwelcome piece of news. "He is?"

"Yeah." Angie drifted away for a moment, then returned. "He's staying until I have my first treatment. Mom felt sorry for him and said he could. Move in. To our house. Can you turn on the TV?"

"In a minute." House stared at his cane tip for a moment, then sent out an expeditionary question. "I thought they didn't get along."

Angie had lost focus again. "What?"

"I thought your mom and dad didn't get along that well."

"They don't," Angie said flatly. "They fight. Or they have sex. And they're not very quiet," she complained.

House left the room.

"Anyway, they used to," Angie amended, before dozing off again.

Leaving Pediatrics, House spotted Scott and Carolyn Barton huddled together on the couch in the waiting area. At first he thought Scott was comforting Carolyn, but it was the other way around: Carolyn was just a little tearful, while Scott was a wreck. His shoulders heaved and fell with half-smothered sobs as Carolyn rubbed his back and talked to him in a soothing voice. After a moment Scott blew his nose noisily and gave her a watery smile.

"I came back East to comfort Angie," he remarked, "and you end up comforting me."

"It's okay, Daddy," Carolyn smiled back. "You don't want to see your little girl in pain, that's all."

Scott lost his grip again. "I love her so much," he wept. "I can't stand the thought of her being so sick."

Now Carolyn was crying. "It's going to be okay, Scott. She's going to be all right." They put their arms around each other and wept together.

Carolyn had an instinct for comforting people, thought House. She could never bear to see him unhappy, whether it was over a lower-than-expected test score or a bad day at work. She would do anything in her power to take his mind off his woes. As he was a very young man at the time, that usually led to an early bedtime, even if it were still morning.

Was she likely to be as generous with Scott? The possibility that she might disturbed him more than was strictly reasonable for an old friend. He departed Pediatrics before the show in the waiting room got any more graphic.

Animal behavioralists have long noted the territorial instincts of the dominant male in most species, especially when the territory included one or more females. For some animals, the presence of another male—even if he were just passing through—aroused such possessive fury that the alpha would half kill the intruder just to get the message across: These females are mine. Horse breeders in particular have noticed that turning a male out to pasture with a herd of mares often led to aggressive, "studdy" behavior towards other males, even if they were all older geldings who hadn't had a drop of testosterone coursing through their blood since they were yearlings.

House was far from a gelding, but at this point his relationship with Carolyn and her daughter was similarly asexual. Nevertheless, he had developed a territorial feeling about them. Even though he had turned her care over to Wilson he still regarded Angie as "his" patient, and he had always been possessive about his patients, even the ones he didn't like. He couldn't have told you what his intentions were regarding Carolyn. But he resented the appearance of Scott Barton. House felt things had been moving along in an interesting direction at a very comfortable pace, and now here was an alien male laying claim to the females, forcing the issue.

Of course, Scott had every right to be there—more right, really, than House. Broken families often came together in a crisis and stayed together afterwards. If you looked at the situation dispassionately, it really was for the best all around.

And here, if you pictured House's mind as a bloodhound hot on the trail, you would see the animal start, shrink back, and walk a wide circle about the next thought: "Everyone ends up leaving me, anyway—and they're usually better off."

Of course, in most cases they had left because he sent them away. On the other hand, they didn't put up much of a fight. Most of them found someone else, usually with unflattering speed. Some of them got married. Even Cameron was probably already looking for her next squeeze, less than a week after they called it quits.

House had learned long ago that allowing his mind to pursue the topic would only lead to hours of painful, fruitless introspection, and he had devised an arsenal of defensive mental moves to avoid that. One of them was to pick a pointless fight with someone completely unrelated to the situation. As he headed back to his office, he was itching to have it out with his new office neighbor on the subject of loud personal phonecalls.

But his neighbor's office was vacant when he got there, and although he hung around through lunch waiting for him to come back, he did not reappear. Frustration and hypoglycemia magnified the negative emotions he was already feeling, adding up to a classic bad mood by the time the unsuspecting fellows arrived for their meeting.

They entered in a jocular state, trading light insults and laughing over something they'd all seen in TV the night before. House waited in his office with his back to them until they registered his silence and settled down, a little apprehensive. Then he stumped to the head of the table and said, without preamble:

"I've been called to New York on a case. I can't tell you anything about it right now. I might be away for a week. Try not to disappear up your own backsides while I'm gone. You—" to Foreman—"don't get a case of Colt 45 and an underage hooker and spend the week at your crib; I'm putting you in charge, god help us. You—" to Cameron and Chase—"if you decide to pick up where you left off with the sex and drugs, don't leave marks above the neck. And don't show yourselves to Cuddy unless your pupils are the right size. I'll be in touch." He wheeled and stalked away.

The fellows sat for a moment, stunned, even a little hurt. It had been weeks since House had lashed out at them. They had just gotten used to him being almost neutral, and now this. They exchanged looks, then the other two looked at Foreman. He expelled a long breath and took off after House.

Foreman caught up with House as he stormed through the lobby.

"Hey!" he called, but House kept walking.

"Let it go, Foreman!" he said loudly, over his shoulder. "I do not know where Cuddy hid your leopard-print G-string. You're gonna have to get a new one for your gig tonight."

Foreman pulled ahead and planted himself in House's path. "What happened back there?" he demanded.

"So you weren't listening. Here's a recap: I have to go out of town on a case I can't talk about. You're in charge—don't screw up."

"Come on, something's not right. You haven't ripped us a new one like that in months. I just want to make sure everything's cool, that's all."

House looked at the neurologist. In six months Foreman would be gone, along with the look he was always giving House, a look that was equal parts exasperation and compassion.

Good.

"Why you buggin', Homes?" House mocked, lapsing into bad white hiphop. "Chillax. I'm straight." He took out a Vicodin, loaded it onto his palm, and struck his forearm with the other fist, launching the pill into the air. He caught it neatly, swallowed, nodded at Foreman, and—as had happened so often in the past year and a half—left him standing there shaking his head.


	22. New York State of Mind

"Let me see if I understand you correctly," Wilson said to Cuddy. "You're sending House down to the City, to consult for another teaching hospital, on a case involving a celebrity patient whose anonymity must be protected at all costs."

"Right," affirmed Cuddy, already sounding less sure about the proposition.

"And you're not even sending Foreman down to keep an eye on him?"

"We don't have the budget to send Foreman."

Wilson observed a respectful moment of silence. Then: "Does this seem like a good idea to you?"

"Foreman can't control him."

"You could send me."

"_You_ can't control him either! Remember Chicago?"

"I'd never let him get me that drunk again," Wilson muttered, but he dropped the subject.

-0-

House had expected to make the one-hour trip to New York in an exultant mood. The case in question had all the right elements: a primary symptom with multiple possible causes, all difficult to prove; a note of urgency; a team of reputable, baffled physicians who would have to do his bidding; and a celebrity patient to be forever grateful to Dr. House, assuming Dr. House didn't do or say anything too horrifying on the way to the cure. Even the fact that he had to keep his patient's identity a secret added to the pleasure, since trying to guess who it was would drive Wilson crazy and inspire hours of speculation amongst the fellows.

But his mood, as he boarded the train, was decidedly sour. The trip started out with three strikes against it.

First of all, he was taking the damned train. A year earlier House had acquired the perfect transportation: a 1960s Corvette, beautifully restored, a rocketship with style. Unfortunately, it was a gift from a gentleman whose profession involved breaking people's knees for defaulting on loans and dropping rivals into garbage crushers. Cuddy and Wilson were in the parking lot the day House drove it to work, and when Wilson told her where the car had come from, Cuddy turned white.

"Get that thing out of here," she said tensely.

"I don't think that's wise," said House. "It would hurt my new friend's feelings. He might leave a horse's head in your bidet."

But for once Cuddy stood firm. She called the hospital's chief counsel, who made some calls himself. The car disappeared that morning, never to be seen again.

Second, there was the destination. Everyone assumed New York was House's natural habitat, a place where he could be among his own kind. But House disliked New Yorkers as much as anyone else who didn't understand them. It's true that they were not put off by his rude, abrasive manner. Instead, they tried to prove that they were even ruder and more abrasive. The hostilities tended to escalate from there, and once in awhile someone would throw a punch.

Besides, New York was not scaled for a man who stood almost 6'3" in his bare feet. With office space rent hovering around $1,000 a square foot, and residential space even higher, New Yorkers are almost pathologically space-conscious. Everything and everyone is jammed together, cheek to jowl, with low ceilings for a tall man to bump his head on and not enough room to swing a cane without knocking something over.

Because living and work space was so expensive, everything else in New York was insanely overpriced. Cuddy had provided him with what she considered a generous per diem, and it was—for Princeton. In New York, it would melt away before dinner, which meant he would have to spend his own money to avoid going to bed hungry. It went against House's most cherished principles to cover work-related expenses. He actually felt a stab of psychic pain every time he got out his wallet, even for a hotdog, because in New York hotdogs with chili cost $6.

The third reason involved the origin of his bad mood: He was leaving behind a situation that might turn critical in his absence. With every mile the train traveled, he could feel the distance increase between himself and the events he longed to control.

House hadn't seriously entertained ideas about resuming a romance with Carolyn Barton; but that didn't mean he was comfortable with the idea of her resuming a romance with Scott. It didn't enter his head that a man and a woman might be able to spend time alone without ending up in bed together. The conviction that sex was inevitable in the presence of opportunity lay at the heart of a very convoluted—some might say twisted—set of ideas he had about sex in general.

Part of the problem was occupational. An infectious disease specialist who also does clinical medicine never runs out of examples to support House Rule Number 2: Sex Makes People Stupid. The patient who tried to circumcise himself with a box opener because his girlfriend was squeamish about foreskins. The small museum of objects (including a flashlight, an MP3 player, and a Ken doll) House had retrieved from orifices they were not designed to enter. The patient who came in to have a cervical erythroplaquia cauterized. This was not a difficult or particularly painful procedure, but House, always wary of post-procedure infection, recommended that she refrain from intercourse for at least ten days afterwards.

"Ten days!" the patient squealed in disbelief.

"Well, a week, anyway."

"A week?"

House gave up. "Can you at least hold off until you get home?"

Then there was the grimmer stuff. The lesbian college student whose girlfriend deliberately gave her herpes so she wouldn't sleep around. The 13-year-old whose throat culture came back positive for gonorrhea--and whose 21-year-old boyfriend felt he deserved credit for hitting on this ingenuous way to have sex with a child without damaging her hymen. The zaftig mother of six children, at least three of whom were probably not her husband's.

All of this was layered on top of a lifetime of exposure to other people's notions about sex. His parents did not entertain liberal ideas about frank discussions with one's children ("He'll figure it out for himself soon enough," was The Major's verdict, "and god help us when he does"). In high school, the jocks divided all of womankind into two camps: bitches and sluts. Sluts put out. Bitches refused. A bitch who finally gave it up automatically joined the sisterhood of sluts. College boys, already world-weary at 20, flatly declred that all women cheat. Medical school classmates attached data to the dictum. ("One in four babies born at any hospital isn't genetically related to the guy whose name is on their birth certificates." House had been trying for years to get an obstetrics nurse to help him verify this claim, absorbing a lot of abusive language by way of refusal.)

Then there was his own experience. Although House had explicitly invited Carolyn to date others in his absence, he never got over the fact that she actually did. Between her and Stacy there was a short parade of girls remarkable only for their willingness to put up with crap from him in hopes of becoming a doctor's wife, leading him to conclude that women as a class did not know what was good for them. Stacy gave him five years of respite in which he almost abandoned some of his deepest-held beliefs about the fairer sex. Then she made a decision that left him a cripple and endured less than a year of bitter sarcasm, hostility, and angry silences before leaving him. The fact that she later betrayed her husband by sleeping with him carried more weight in his decision to push her away again than even he knew. In a way, it was the same brush that had tarred Carolyn that night in the library. Both episodes seemed to prove that when it came to sex, only a fool would proceed solely on trust.

Even more important was the feeling that any woman who would risk so much to be with him was seriously compromised to begin with: either she was using him to make her "real" man jealous, or escaping from a dying relationship, or she had such round heels that she'd topple over for anyone. A lifetime of being made to feel that almost everything he thought and felt was unacceptable had shaped him into the living embodiment of the old Groucho Marx adage "I refuse to join any club that would have me for a member."

In short, a Freudian analyst who spent an hour talking to Greg House about his views on sex would have to lie quietly in a darkened room with a cold compress for the rest of the afternoon. His thoughts on the subject were so wrapped in dichotomies and cynicism that it would be hard to know where to begin to sort them out.

House had wanted to take one of the mid-afternoon trains to Manhattan. Packing took less than 10 minutes—a couple of jackets and a week's worth of t-shirts, underwear, jeans, and drugs can be crammed into a rolling dufflebag in the time it takes to sneeze, especially if you don't care about wrinkles—but he was interrupted by the phone three times. His first caller was Cuddy, who had apparently been talking to Wilson and wanted House to know that she actually owned a pair of pinking shears. The second call was from Wilson, who kept him on the line for 15 minutes trying to con him into divulging the patient's identity. The third was from a Dr. William Whitbred, the head of the patient's team at New York –Presbytarian. Dr. Whitbred wanted to express his heartfelt gratitude for House's willingness to help out in this delicate matter; to put the staff and all the resources of the hospital at his disposal; and to promise a meeting that evening in which they could go over every detail of this mystifying case. By the time he got out the door, the earliest commuter trains were already running, and all of them were packed.

House had barely settled into his assigned car when he was surrounded: three girls in their mid teens, flashing acres of leg and midriff, who took the remaining seats in his row and launched into a cellphone round robin, each calling a series of absent friends and relating to them what the other friends had just said. This was accompanied by shrieking and high-pitched laughter at a volume that drowned out the sounds of the train.

If this had happened in more innocent times, House could have easily come up with a comment that would terrify them into silence for the rest of the trip. But kids today are trained to call 911 if a stranger so much as burps in their direction, and House didn't feel like having to explain himself to the authorities right then. He slumped in his seat, hat over his eyes, and distracted himself by imagining each of the girls some years in the future, nine months pregnant by the boys they were gabbling about and in the final stages of labor. The agonized howls, the pleas for epidurals, but no: Dr. House would solemnly remind them of this moment and their blatant disregard for the comfort of others, and they would experience the miracle of birth right down to the last spine-wringing contraction…

It wasn't working--the girls' disjoint conversations kept leaking into his fantasy. Specifically, the word "like." They used it every third or fourth word, as if it were a comma: "So like I was like talking to him? And he was like what're you doing Friday night, and I was like totally like I don't believe he's like asking me that!"

There were no definites in their world. Everything was an approximation of something else.

House recalled reading that in order to give the dialogue he wrote for Lolita authenticity, Vladmir Nabokov used to ride the city buses of Ithaca, New York, and eavesdrop on the local teenagers. He wondered what Nabokov would make of the tortured vernacular of 21st century adolescents. Would he have forced himself to keep listening, or would he have written off America as a bad investment and fled home to Russia?

For a few minutes House lost himself in mentally updating _Lolita_, putting the argot of New Jersey teenagers into her mouth and outfitting her with a cellphone. Was such a novel possible today? he wondered. Lolita was precociously sexual, but even she knew that some things should only be discussed in hushed voices, if at all. These girls were talking at the tops of their lungs about sexual manuevers he'd never even heard of until medical school.

At last the train pulled into Grand Central Station, and the trio stood up to leave. House stayed where he was, hat over his eyes, his cane blocking their exit.

"Tell your pal Ricky to hustle that sweet ass of his over to the nearest clinic," he told the girls loudly. "Those 'bumps on his junk' sound like a raging case of veneral warts. And if any of you are Ricky's friends-with-benefits, make sure he wears a rubber."

Scandalized, the girls fled the car. From the window House watched them disembark, already calling their friends to tell them what the disgusting old man had said about Ricky.

-0-

Rush hour was in full swing when House emerged from the station. In some cities, a man with a cane and a worsening limp might inspire others to share a cab, but New York was not one of them, and it was nearly an hour before he arrived at the Club.

Right away, House saw why Cuddy wasn't worried about his importuning club members with anti-Ivy attitude. There was a sign right at check-in:

"Guests are expected to wear business attire in all dining areas and lounges."

House supposed he could argue that for some people, jeans and a t-shirt were business attire, but it would be easier—and probably cheaper—to find places with more relaxed dress codes for his dining and drinking needs.

Exhausted, aching from his head to his right kneecap, House staggered to his room and opened the door. He was immediately reminded of Ronald Reagan's immortal line: "Where's the rest of me?" The room wasn't merely small; it looked like an experiment to see how little space could be alloted to accommodate standard hotel-room furnishings. The bathroom was the size of a broom closet; he knew without looking that the showerhead was the water-saver kind. There was so little floor space, he'd have to stand on the bed to use the full-length mirror. The bed itself was suspiciously undersized, and House could tell that even if he slept diagonally, his feet were going to hang off the edge most of the night.

He skirted the bed and looked out the one window. The view was of an empty lot and a building with its exterior wall torn away.

Fortunately, House had not come to this wasteland without provisions. En route to the Princeton station he'd stopped at a supermarket and bought a six-pack of bottled water and half a dozen Power Bars. Then, feeling things were getting too wholesome, he added two large Milky Ways, two Snickers bars, and a can of honey-roasted peanuts. House popped a pill and washed it down with a chocolate Power Bar. It was better than he remembered, like a giant Tootsie Roll, if you could ignore the strong undertones of multivitamin. He emptied a bottle of water and had a handful of peanuts and a Milky Way for dessert. Considerably fortified, he headed for New York-Presbytarian Hospital.

It was past seven when he arrived, an hour when Princeton-Plainsboro began to settle down for the night, but New York-Presbytarian was still as thronged as if it were noon. House went to the Information Desk with little hope of getting much usable information, but the woman there gave him very good directions and offered to call Dr. Whitbred to let him know House was on the way.

It was a long hike to Whitbred's office, but the combination of a dinner high in sugar and a second Vicodin served him well, and House was in a reasonably affable mood when he arrived. The team was already assembled. It consisted of Dr. Whitbred, Dr. David Korn, and Dr. Ruth Leaven—or, as House referred to them internally, after listening to their description of the case, Dr. Orthodoxy, Dr. In-Over-His-Head, and Dr. Scared Shitless.

Dr. Shitless was finishing a pathetically defensive account of the tests run to date when House decided to cut to the chase.

"You haven't tested him for syphillis or the clap. Or herpes, or any of the other stuff you get from having too much fun. Why?"

Dr. Orthodoxy smiled carefully, as if fearful that a bolder expression might cause his ears to fall off.

"The patient is 71 years old, happily married. Under the circumstances, it seems unnecessarily…insensitive."

"You called an infectious disease specialist all the way from Princeton, and now you're telling me I can't test for the most common infections on the planet because it might hurt his feelings?"

The smile wavered. "Surely you appreciate the implications of testing a world-famous man for sexually transmitted diseases," Dr. Ortho said gravely. "A piece of news like that can be devastating, especially in light of his, ah, romantic history. No matter how carefully we protect his identity, in a setting like this, where several people might handle different aspects of the testing—"

"So we'll do the testing ourselves! Unless you don't trust Korny there to keep from running to the _Post_ with an exclusive."

Dr. Orthodoxy's smile disappeared. Clearly, House's reputation had preceeded him, and the great man was beginning to see how he earned it.

"We will take your suggestion under consideration, Dr. House," he said stiffly. "Now, why don't we go meet the patient before it gets too much later."

A nurse appeared with a white lab coat, which she proferred to House, who ignored her. The team set off down the hall toward the elevators with Whitbred in the lead. House zigzagged around the other two and caught up with Whitbred. The nurse gamely jogged alongside him for a few yards, still tendering the coat, before giving up and returning to her station.

The patient's room was dim, the patient himself prostrate, eyes closed, illumined by the spot lights over his bed. There he lay, idol of millions, winner of awards, clown prince of a generation: an old man with graying hair, his shrunken face naked and vulnerable without his trademark moustache; an elderly crossroads for the drips and hoses that were performing many of his bodily functions. House felt another pang of sympathy. You could strive all your life to reach the top of your craft, he thought, but in the end you'll end up pretty much like everyone else; a withered husk of your former glory, all the evidence that you once signified stripped away, helpless in the temple of modern healthcare. He took a deep breath.

"I'm Dr. House, I'm a big fan, it's an honor to meet you, sir," he brayed. "Now, let's have a look at that pee-pee."


	23. Night Moves

William Hartford Whitbred, MD, PhD, had not reached his current station in life without knowing how to handle a loose cannon. Sensing trouble when his distinguished colleague suddenly sprinted forward and entered the patient's room first, he accelerated and arrived just in time to hear House's greeting. The patient's eyes flew open and sought Whitbred's. "Who is this lunatic?" they asked. Whitbred cleared his throat and stepped forward firmly.

"We apologize for disturbing you," he smoothed. "We just wanted you to meet Dr. House before he started working with you tomorrow."

The patient eyed House doubtfully, taking in the scuffed running shoes, worn corduroy jeans, the "Life's a Beer" t-shirt and hectic hair. "He's a doctor?"

"Technically, yes," House said breezily. "Now, let's have a look—"

Whitbred swiftly interjected himself between House and the bed.

"We'll just be going, now," he told the patient. "Have a pleasant evening."

This was the team's cue to about-face and march, but House was not familiar with the drill and stayed where he was, staring at a woman who had been sitting in the shadows but who rose as he entered. She stayed where she was and didn't speak, but she followed the action intently, as if there might be a police line up later.

"You must be the wife," House guessed, leaned toward her with his right hand outstretched. "Greg House. How's your equipment working these days—any problems peeing, burning sensations, feel like you need to go all the time?"

Whitbred looked as if he'd swallowed a hornet. "Dr. House. I'd like you to meet the rest of the staff before they leave for the night."

House winked at the wife. "You're a lot better-looking than your pictures. I'll be seeing you later."

Whitbred sounded strangled now. "This way, Dr. House."

The team exited, leaving patient and wife to exchange looks and ponder their fates at the hands of the specialist from Princeton.

-0-

House spent the next half hour not listening to Dr. Orthodoxy's strained lecture on the need for discretion and sensitivity. He also met the rest of the staff. This included the nurse who had tried to wrestle him into a lab coat—he didn't bother to catch her name, deciding instead to refer to her as Hot Lips—and a resident named Krishna Ramakrishnan, to whom he assigned the inebriated-sounding diminutive Krish. Hot Lips was a by-the-book type whose officious manner almost hid her intense need for approval from authority figures. Krish was so deferential in demeanor that he must be covering up a gift for observing and drawing unflattering conclusions about his superiors. House decided to cultivate him as a potential ally if—no, when—things got ugly with Whitbred.

At last the team was given the benediction, ordered to reassemble by 8:00 am at the latest, and released.

House knew not to bother trying to find a bar near the club where a beer cost under $5. He did manage to find a nearby tavern where the receipts were ambiguous enough that he could spend his entire dinner allowance on scotch. The downside was that the bartender badly wanted to share his thoughts about the Yankees' prospects that year, and wouldn't shut up until House expressed the sincere hope that the entire team would pound steroids until their balls fell off, then die in a fiery plane crash on their way to rehab. His allowance had run out by the point anyway, so he went back to the club to try to get some sleep.

As he predicted, the bed wasn't long enough for him. The average-sized person can't really appreciate what it means to have your feet hang off the edge all night. It's not just the cold: it's that the circulation gets cut off at the ankles, causing the body to jerk itself awake every 20 minutes or so. Then it's five minutes of pins-and-needles and another half hour of trying to get back to sleep again.

After one such cycle House began to dream that the Yankees' steroid abuse had instead caused them to grow until they were 100 feet tall, and that they were stomping around the city looking for the SOB who wished them ball-less and dead. He could hear their footsteps echoing through the streets, just outside the club—

House awoke and realized that there really was a loud, intermittent noise just outside the club. Raising his head, he saw through the window that the half-demolished building at the other end of the empty lot was lighted, and that there was a wrecking crew on the third floor, ripping away great sections of interior wall and hurling them into a dumpster at ground level. According to the digital clock it was 2:47 am.

He curled into a ball with a pillow over his head and tried to will himself to ignore the noise. But the crew had an uncanny sense of timing; just as he started to drift off to sleep, another hunk of wall would slam into the dumpster, the noise bouncing off the walls of the neighboring buildings for maximum effect, and he would startle awake again. Reaching for his duffel—the one advantage of a room the size of a gerbil cage is that nothing is ever out of reach—he pulled out his iPod, stuck the buds in his ears, and turned it on. The battery was dead. The recharger was at home, of course.

House flung the iPod back into the duffel and stared at the ceiling for a minute, trying to think of some distraction that might make him feel less murderous. After a moment he rolled over, fumbled for his cellphone, and placed a call.

-0-

Dr. Lisa Cuddy, clad only in a white flannel nightgown, stood barefoot on her front lawn and watched the Princeton fire department search her home. The spring night was cool, and she crossed her arms over her chest, both to keep warm and to hide a certain soft-tissue response to the drop in temperature. The fire sirens had been turned off, thank god, but the emergency lights on top of the engines were still on and rotating, sending sharp beams of red and white into her neighbor's windows, drawing them out of bed to see what the commotion was about. Cuddy had a terrible feeling that when the lights flashed on her, they rendered the nightgown more or less ineffectual as a cloak for nakedness.

"Can't I just run in and get a sweater?" she begged, but the captain was firm: "Sorry, Ma'am, we need everybody out of the house until we get the all-clear."

"But anyone can see there's no fire!"

"Can't take chances, Ma'am. Once a report of fire is phoned in, we can't leave until we're sure there's no danger."

"Look, this is ridiculous, it's obviously a false alarm, I have a meeting at 7 am, how much longer is this going to take?"

"Shouldn't be long now," the captain said vaguely, and stomped away to holler at his crew to check the basement and the garden shed in back.

-0-

Back in New York, the demolition crew took a prolonged coffee break. House slept, temporarily at peace with the world.

-0-

At 9:19 am sharp, House was seated at the conference table in Dr. O's suite, listening to him get the meeting underway and wondering if that second can of Red Bull might've been overkill. His fingertips longed to beat a syncopated jazz rhythm on the tabletop, and his left leg appeared to have developed its own separate nervous system; the knee kept jerking up and down in spite of his attempts to control it. He palmed a pill, hoping to level himself out, but he wasn't subtle enough—Dr. In-Over-His-Head caught the action and gave Dr. Shitless a significant look. So they'd heard about that, too. He was going to have to be more discreet.

Whitbred was midway through a recap of the synopsis from the night before when House raised his hand. Whitbred ignored him. House kept his arm up. Whitbred talked on. House braced his raised arm with his other hand and starting wiggling his fingers. Whitbred sighed and recognized him.

"When do I examine the patient?" House demanded.

"You seem very eager to get to that stage," smirked Whitbred. "I thought that wasn't your style."

"No doctor can adequately fulfill his duties toward his patient without a thorough exam," House intoned solemnly, catching the flavor if not the timbre of Dr. O's speaking style.

"Very well. Nurse Tallmudge will assist you."

"No nurse," House said emphatically. "This is guy-to-guy stuff."

"It's our policy to have a nurse present at all patient exams."

"Whaddya think I'm gonna do, feel him up? Pinch his famous ass?"

"Dr. House," Whitbred said icily, "I realize you are accustomed to being granted a great deal of latitude at your hospital, but I must insist that you respect the protocols of this institution."

"I respect them," House said dangerously. "I don't want to follow this one. You guys have diddled around with his problems for a week now, and all you've accomplished is a pile of inconclusive test results while his piss backs up to his eyeballs. I wanna ask him some questions he might not want to answer in the presence of a lady. Are you gonna grant me an exclusive interview, or do I go back to Princeton?"

Silence. In-Over-His-Head exchanged another look with Shitless; Krish pulled at his lip, possibly to hide a smile. Whitbred closed his eyes.

"Very well, Dr. House," he said, through tight lips. "You may have your interview. But please, remember to conduct yourself in a professional manner."

Hot Lips approached with a lab coat. House stood as if to let her put it on him and even allowed her a moment of triumph as one sleeve slid over his arm. Then, jellyfishlike, he slid it out again just as she started putting on the second sleeve. He turned around suddenly so she found herself putting both sleeves on him with the coat backwards. House spun again tucking both arms to his side so Hot Lips had nothing to hang the coat on, and stepped away so it fell to the floor. He loped out of the conference room.

Krishna pulled his lip again.

-0-

The patient was finishing breakfast as House arrived and looked up, startled, at his approach.

"Don't mind me," House told him. "I'm just here to check the meter." He took in the contents of the tray. Two hardboiled egg yolks squatted on the dish like a pair of jaundiced eyes; half an untoasted plain bagel; a glass of half-drunk milk.

The patient wiped his lips gingerly. "Dr. …House, is it?" he said, showing none of the geekiness that had endeared him to his Baby Boomer fans. "If we're going to be able to work together, I need to know that last night was an aberration. Because if you ever talk to my wife like that again, I will not only sue you for everything you've got, I will make sure you never practice medicine again."

"Fair enough," House said genially. "I've been at the medical game for 25 years; I don't really need to practice anymore anyway."

The patient fixed him with cold brown eyes. "I realize I made my reputation as a comedian," he said. "Don't assume that means I have a sense of humor about my personal life."

House made himself look remorseful. "No jokes. Got it."

"I mean, go ahead and laugh about the other doctors, or the Knicks this season, or the food here—" he dismissed his breakfast tray with a nervy gesture—"but Jeeziz."

"Doctors. Knicks. Food. Got it," said House, and he went right to work.


	24. Out to Lunch

House was not the outdoorsy type, but by noon he felt a powerful need to flee the corridors of New York-Presbytarian Hospital. It was his habit, after collecting new information, to hide in his office for a few hours to digest it at leisure, but there was no place at NY-Pres where he could be alone. Whitbred's conference room was perpetually booked by committees of doctors sonorously disagreeing with each other. The office space he was granted for the duration of his stay was a corner of a cubicle occupied by two other doctors. No matter where he went in the enormous complex to hide, someone managed to find him and ask if they could help him with anything. After two hours of being bombarded with offers of assistance, House came close to caning the helpful orderly who found him slumped and pensive in a corner of the chapel and approached to see if he would like to talk to the minister. It was a relief to push through the revolving doors and merge with the anonymous masses thronging the Manhattan sidewalk.

Like most northern cities, New York is primarily designed for indoor activity; it's possible to spend whole days there and forget that the city has any such thing as a sky and weather, and that the weather can be delightful once in awhile. This particular day was stunning: a breeze off the East River made it cooler than Princeton, but the sun was hot and the sky, where you could see it, was a brilliant blue. House stood for a moment taking it all in. The prevailing winds brought news of a hotdog vendor in the near vicinity. He followed his nose to a cart parked nearby and got in line.

There were several people ahead of him, but the proprietor was brisk and economical in his movements and before long it was House's turn to order. "Do you have sauerkraut?" he asked pessimistically.

The vendor mimed offense. "Of course I have sauerkraut," he said indignantly. "I'm a professional!" House ordered two hotdogs with kraut, a bag of chips, and another Red Bull to keep the buzz going. He found a vacant seat on a nearby cement planter and settled in, eating the first hotdog in four bites and the second in six. He methodically crushed the bag of chips until the contents were fine crumbs, opened the bag, and alternately poured chip crumbs and Red Bull into his mouth. Then he got out his cellphone—which was charged, for once—and dialed the Diagnostics Department in Princeton.

"Chase here."

"You're sitting in my chair," House growled.

"No, I'm not," lied Chase, audibly getting up.

"Okay, then, write this on the whiteboard: urinary frequency, urge incontinence; mild fever and headache, facial palsy, arthralgia, which may or may not be related, photosensitivity. Physical exam revealed incipient inguinal lymphadenopathy, ulceration on the coronal sulcus that's almost healed, some tenesmus. So far bacterial cultures are negative, CSF and PCR inconclusive."House spoke at top speed, knowing Chase was sprinting to the conference room as he pretended to be jotting it all down.

"Read it back to me," said House.

Chase actually did a pretty good job, only leaving out two symptoms and substituting "urinary incontinence" for "urge incontinence." House decided to let him off the hook.

"Where's Foreman?"

"Clinic."

"Cameron?"

"She took half a personal day. I don't know where she went."

"Probably shopping for a new interview suit. Someone shoulda gone with her to keep her away from the vest and puffy blouse racks. Okay, call 'em in for a 2 o'clock meeting. I need to pick some fresh brains." Looking up, he saw Krish at the far end of the plaza, scanning the crowd. He ducked his head and pulled his cap down.

"R-right," said Chase. "What can you tell us about the patient's history?"

"Nothing. Call me at two." House hung up and startled. Krish was standing almost at his feet.

"Dr. House. Dr. Whitbred asked me to see if I could find you."

House squinted up at him meaningfully. "Any luck?"

"Not yet. Really, you could be anywhere," Krish said smoothly, and sat down beside him. The breeze picked up, and Krish shivered.

"I can never get used to how cold it is here," he observed.

"Where're you from?" asked House.

"Atlanta."

This seemed to be everybody's day to challenge preconceptions, thought House. It was certainly the case with the patient, who was not as jolly as you might expect from a man who made his living by making people laugh. Instead, he was preoccupied, almost morose, answering questions in a whisper and gazing out the window as if it were someone else's genitals being inspected, someone else's groin being probed for lumps and thickenings. After examining him for ten minutes, House covered him up, peeled off his gloves, sat down and looked at him thoughtfully.

"Why don't you tell me straight out what you're worried about," he suggested, "and if I can, I'll put your mind at ease."

The patient shrugged as if to say the problem was obvious. "Cancer."

"You're in the clear," House said firmly.

"You're sure?"

"I can't promise it's not popping up somewhere else," House reassured him. "But your prostate is a thing of beauty, and your bladder and kidneys look clean—exhausted, but clean. Right now we're going on the theory that your peeing problems are being caused by nerve damage from chronic meningitis, which is different from the acute kind; the symptoms are a lot milder and take longer to develop into something that jumps out at us."

"So…chronic means what? Is it curable?"

"Oh, sure, we can cure it," House said dismissively. "All we have to do is figure out what caused it. Meningitis isn't a disease; it's a description--you get some kind of infection, and it inflames the membranes, or meninges, surrounding your brain and spinal cord. The acute kind is bad enough, because it can be bacterial or viral. Chronic is a real pain in the ass; in addition to bacteria and viruses, we also have to look at parasites, pollutants, immune reactions, brain disorders like MS, and some drugs. That's why we keep sucking fluids out of you; we're testing you for every pathogen on the planet, and a few we've made up as we went along."

The patient pushed his glasses up his nose and coughed. "This nerve damage. Is it reversible?"

"Are you going to have to wear diapers? Is that what you're asking?"

The patient closed his eyes and exhaled loudly through his nose.

"If we can clean up the other stuff, I think we can get your bladder under control," said House. "No promises. It's one of those systems that looks simple from the outside—filters and hydraulics, right?—but the electronics are something else again. You've got muscles and nerves that have to work together to hold urine in the bladder and then release it at the right time. The nerves carry messages to the brain to let it know when the bladder is full, and from the brain to the bladder, telling muscles to tighten or release. When the wires get scrambled, the messages might tell the muscles to squeeze when they shouldn't, so you end up having to pee every half hour. Sometimes you leak. It's a great system when it works. When it doesn't, you start to see all the places where it's held together with duct tape and piano wire."

For the first time, the patient smiled. "I take it you're not a subscriber to the theory of Intelligent Design?"

"Let's put it this way," said House. "I find it hard to respect the opinions of anyone who can look at our government and refuse to believe that we're descended from monkeys. Anyway. If you want me to get to the bottom of your problem, you're gonna have to level with me about some stuff that you think is none of my business. If you want me to help you, it is my business. Work with me?"

The patient raised both hands in a resigned gesture and let them drop again.

"All right then," said House. "Let's begin with your sex life."

Staring gloomily at the mid-afternoon traffic, with Krish sitting companionably silent beside him, House reflected that it was heavy lifting to get even basic information out of the patient. He was skittish about answering mundane questions about his own kids—"Have any of them recently had chicken pox or measles?" "I can't say. I don't think so. No."—and he quickly shut down talk about his sex life: yes, he had one, limited entirely to his wife; no, there had been no other sexual partners since their marriage, next question. He freely admitted to heavy use of ibuprofen, which has been implicated in meningitis, and cimetidine, which was thought to increase the risk of certain bacterial infections—but the bacterial cultures that had already been done had all been negative, and House trusted those results because the guy led such an incredibly sheltered life that it was hard to think how he might come in contact with a tick (Lyme Disease), a cat (cat scratch disease), or tainted food (listeria). His lunch tray arrived while House was still there, its contents illustrating the improbabilityof exposure to food-borne pathogens: thoroughly boiled chicken breast, macaroni with no sauce, canned pears, skim milk. Apparently he only ate white foods, which meant he was probably safe from the ravages of improperly smoked fish.

House's attention was drawn to the expensively understated car drawing up to the curb; a Rolls, but the smaller, don't-gawk-people-it's-just-a-car model. The driver emerged and hurried around the back to help his passengers disembark. First came two little girls, who skipped and fidgeted on the sidewalk while their mother collected various purses and bags and was finally handed out by the driver. It was the patient's wife. House registered her identity even as something—some tug or pressure as their hands parted—made him take a closer look at the driver.

"Okay, you found me," he told Krish. "Let's get back to work."


	25. Village People

Instead of heading into the hospital, House made a beeline for the group by the Rolls. Krishna watched with astonishment as the scruffy, brooding lunatic from New Jersey transformed himself into a tall, self-deprecating charmer with bright blue eyes in the fifty paces it took him to travel from planter to curbside. By the time he reached the patient's wife, House was beaming gently, leaning a little more than necessary on his cane as he offered his right hand. To Krishna, who witnessed their first meeting, the most amazing change of all came over the wife's face: from guarded attention to something approaching warmth and sympathy.

He glanced over at the driver, who stood stiffly off to the side, watching the wife as if waiting to be dismissed. He was short but strikingly handsome, with dark skin and black hair and eyes, and he glowered at House as if he were poaching on his territory. Krishna suddenly understood why his presence had galvanized the older doctor.

"I'm Dr. House," Krishna heard him saying to the wife. "I want to apologize for the awkwardness of our meeting last night. I'd just blown into town, all excited about meeting your husband—I'm a huge fan—and I wasn't thinking. Here, let me take that for you." House relieved her of the children's backpacks, deftly transferring them to Krishna. "I was on my way to see your husband anyway, let me walk with you."

The wife turned to the driver and murmured something in Spanish. He nodded and touched his hat, all the while keeping his eyes fixed on House. Then he got into the car and drove off.

House led the way into the hospital, the wife walking companionably beside him, the daughters right behind them. Krishna brought up the rear, thinking Whitbred was wrong: House knew perfectly well how to conduct himself like a professional. He didn't need Krishna to moderate his dealings with patients.

The charm offensive lasted until they were all in the patient's room. The girls were sent off with a nurse and two dollars each from House to find a vending machine with "good candy." Then House got down to business.

"The driver; been with you for a long time?"

"Six months," said the wife, growing wary again.

"Seems like a devoted guy. He from Brazil?"

"Venezuala," said the wife, pronouncing the "v" as a "b."

"Been in this country long? Does he live in the house with you?"

"Less than a year. He has an apartment over the garage."

House nodded. The patient eyed him suspiciously. "What does Rico have to do with this?"

"Maybe nothing," House shrugged. "But I've gotta tell you, when it comes to figuring out what's ailing you, I'm running out of domestic suspects. I see this guy, and he seems close to your family, so I wonder: did he bring anything into the country besides that white, white smile, and pass it along to you?"

"What are you implying?" the patient asked, a dangerous vibration in his tone,

"I'm not implying anything," said House. "When I have a question, I come right out and ask it. Does he take either of you for rides that don't involve the Rolls?"

"GET OUT." The patient's face was white with fury.

"You can throw me out," House observed, "but that doesn't get rid of the bug, whatever it is."

"OUT!"

Sick with embarrasssment, Krishna put a hand on House's sleeve. House didn't budge. "Let's drop the act, okay? Anyone who keeps naked pictures of his teenaged co-stars has some experience with the kinky stuff. Not that I care. This won't go beyond this room—"

"I'm calling Security." The patient fumbled for his intercom button.

"You're 70 years old, for chrissake! If some spirochete or virus is shutting down your plumbing, your kidneys are going to take the hit—"

The wife looked at the patient with real fear in her eyes. "Maybe we'd better—"

"You're crazy," the patient hissed; whether to his wife or his doctor or both wasn't clear. He pointed an unambiguous finger at House: "You had them draw blood for syphilis and scrape my dick for herpes. You think I didn't know what that was all about? You're a sick bastard trying to make a buck on my reputation. You're fired. And if you aren't out of this room in ten seconds, I'm calling the cops."

"Okay," House said calmly. "I'll leave you two to talk it over." He left the room, Krishna trailing hangdog in his wake.

Outside, feeling the eyes of the staff at the nursing station on them, Krishna opened his mouth to commiserate, but House was already checking his cellphone.

"Dammit! They did call at two, but my ringer was off," he muttered. "It's almost four, they'll be sneaking out early by now. I'll just have to finish this case without them." He flipped the phone shut and turned to Krishna. "What're your thoughts?" House headed toward the elevator bank.

His thoughts? Krishna only had one, which was that Dr. House must have misunderstood what the patient had said. He was fired—there was no case!

The elevator arrived and they stepped inside. Even before the doors shut, House said, in a carrying voice, "Okay, which one is doing the driver? Fifty bucks says it's her, and I bet he films them. Now, is it syph or the big H?"

He kept up in this vein, not seeming to notice that Krishna was incapable of doing anything but opening and closing his mouth, until they arrived in Whitbred's conference room. The man himself was there, a crocodilian smile on his face.

"Dr. House. You have exceeded my every expectation. Not only has the patient asked—no, demanded—to have you taken off his case—"

"He'll get over it when he starts feeling better," House said airily.

"—but when he sees that the tests for venereal disease that you insisted on running are negative, he may have excellent grounds for a lawsuit. It pains me to say it," Whitbred added, looking very pleased for a man in pain, "but I advise you to return to Princeton immediately and start looking for a very good lawyer."

House turned to Krishna. "What're you doing about dinner?"

"Dr. House—"

"I heard you, Whitbred. I'm fired. Thanks, I already got that from the patient. I also heard you say he's tested clear. Why don't you hurry along and give him the good news? You can toss spitballs at me from his window while I drag my sorry ass back to New Jersey."

Whitbred was livid. "The patient has had quite enough turmoil for one day, thanks to you," he foamed. "I plan to let him rest tonight and notify him of the results first thing in the morning."

"Great. Then what'll you tell him? 'We don't know what's wrong with you, Sir, but it isn't VD, so let's count our blessings while we teach you how to catherize yourself and show you some nifty diaper rash remedies.'"

Whitbred drew himself up as if to deliver a searing rebuttal; then wheeled and strode out of the room. They heard the door to his office slam.

House perched on the edge of the table and helped himself to a pill. "I always thought New Yorkers were obnoxious, in-your-face types," he said. "I never expected to see one turn pussy like that."

"He's from Connecticut," Krishna murmured.

House laughed. "Figures."

"Dr. House—" Krishna hesitated, aware that their relationship was, technically, terminated, then plunged ahead. "Why did you force such an unpleasant conversation on the patient and his wife? Why not just give him broad-spectrum antibiotics, anti-virals, whatever, and hope that clears it up? Why risk getting fired unnecessarily?"

House looked him over, no longer amused. "Then he goes home, they resume whatever it was they were doing, and because the wife and the driver are still infected, he's back here in three months peeing into a tube again," he said. "He's 70 years old; his system can't take it."

"But the tests came back negative," Krishna pleaded, almost weeping with shame for him.

"Those tests came back negative. Two tests. There are a lot of other STIs in the sea."

"But now you can't help him at all!"

"Sure we can," House said, sliding off the table and slinging an arm around the resident's shoulders. "We just have to figure out how."

-0-

Krishna gave the cab driver an address in the Village House had never heard of, but he didn't protest, preferring to save his energy for the ride ahead. The driver was not as suicidal as some he'd known, but he still found himself bracing one hand against the ceiling, one against the door, his good leg jammed into the seat back, as the cab twisted through rush-hour traffic, slammed to a halt at red lights, and became airborne over potholes the size of the Long Island Sound.

They reached their destination in more or less working order. Krishna paid the driver as House leaned on his cane and peered at the sign over the door: Brokeback Mountin'. He swung on Krish with a look of alarm.

"I am not gay," Krishna assured him. "But the food here is very good, and there is cheap beer, and pinball."

The interior was done up in Western resort ghost-town saloon style, with a piano in one corner and a row of spitoons at the bar. House and Krish slid into a booth and ordered cheeseburgers and beer. Krishna proved a reliable restaurant critic; the food really was very good, and the beer—while not cheap by Princeton standards—was a great deal more affordable than uptown.

"Will Whitbred really wait until morning to rat me out?" House asked, through a mouthful of french fries. He waved the waiter over and ordered more beer.

"Oh, yes," said Krish, matter-of-factly. "Tuesday is his wife's night out with her lady friends, and he always leaves the hospital right at 4:30 to go see his mistress in Brooklyn."

House grinned. "No kidding. That sneaky old SOB. And from the look of him I'd have sworn he hadn't had sex since the second Reagan Administration."

"Perhaps he has not moved his bowels since then," Krishna suggested, and they both laughed like second graders at an overbearing teacher.

"Seriously, though," said House, sobering a little, "if syphilis is out, and herpes is out, what else can it be?"

"Why are you so sure it is related to sex?" Krishna asked. "It is perfectly possible that they are telling the truth; they are in a monogamous relationship, there is no STI."

"It's possible," House shrugged. "It's not probable. You saw the driver; you saw them together. Did he strike you as the old family retainer type?"

"Is that all you have to go on?"

"Of course not," said House. "There's also the exam I did this morning. He had a lesion on his weinie; it was almost healed, and he claimed he didn't even know it was there. There was also some thickening in his groin, like he might be working up to an abscess."

Krishna held up a hand for silence. In his mind, House's words and what he knew about the driver were like puzzle pieces; he mentally turned them this way and that, looking to see if they fit together, searched for others that might complete the picture…

"How are his bowel movements?" he asked.

House raised his eyebrows. "He says it's uncomfortable. That could be constipation. He's not a high fiber kind of guy."

Krishna shook his head, delighted; the last piece of the puzzle had clicked into place. "Lymphogranuloma venereum," he pronounced.

House was impressed. "LGV! Good old _Chlamydia trachomatis_; just rare enough up North so we don't automatically think of it—"

"—but still going strong in South America!" Krishna finished triumphantly. They toasted each other with beer and ordered another round.

"Now," said House, "all we have to do is get access to his bodily fluids so we can run a few tests. Then all we have to do is persuade him, the wife, and the driver to get treatment. Then we treat the bladder thing, and we can wrap the whole thing up in time for the weekend."

"How do we get back into his good graces after the scene today?" wondered Krishna.

"I dunno," said House, draining his glass. "You're the one on a roll; you tell me."

They ordered another round and talked. They ordered another round and played some pinball to clear their heads. The place was starting to fill up with men in various degrees of Western costumary, some of whom annoyed House by loudly admiring his skill in terms dripping with double entendre. Krishna noticed this and worried, but the pressure of several quarts of beer made it impossible to watch him every minute. Reluctantly he slipped away to the restroom, returning in haste but not fast enough—House was in the center of a ring of spectators, nose to nose with a fellow in a Stetson and ostrich-skin boots, and he was waving his cane with a menacing air.

"If you make that joke about playing with your balls one more time, I'm gonna push this hook down your throat and pull 'em out by the roots," he was saying.

The fellow in the Stetson turned red. "There's no need to get snippy," he said.

"Snippy? What kinda talk is that for a cowpoke?" taunted House. "You wouldn't make a good pimple on a real cowboy's ass."

And before Krishna could intervene, Stetson disproved that theory by hauling off and socking Dr. House in the eye.

-0-

The phrase "rang his bell" applied with a vengeance in House's case; he literally heard a ringing noise as Krishna and the bar owner pushed their way through the crowd and knelt beside him. He was still groggy a few minutes later as they propped him in a booth and applied ice to his face. He focussed his good eye on Krishna, who shook his head mournfully.

"Oh, Dr. House," he said. "Why must you always lead with your mouth?"

The bar owner, meanwhile, was chastizing Stetson in no uncertain terms.

"Davy, I canNOT have this kind of thing happening; you'll get us shut down," he complained. "You made almost the same joke to Ken the other day; how can you hit someone else for saying it to you?"

Davy held his hat in his hands and looked remorsefully at House. "I don't know what got into me," he admitted. "Can I buy you a drink and make it up to you?"

"You can buy me a drink," House said cautiously. Within seconds, a double scotch appeared at his elbow. When he had drained that, a second showed up without intermission.

Fifteen minutes later, House was again at the center of a crowd. This time he was at the piano, pounding out requests, mostly Motown, as the delighted patrons sang along. Krishna joined him for a competitive version of "My Girl," in which he and House sang the original refrain and the rest of the group substituted "guy" for "girl."

By one o'clock they were out on the sidewalk, bidding affectionate farewells in all directions while the bar owner called them a cab. They drove off during a final volley of blown kisses. Krishna's head was swimming, but House sat up straight, gripping his cane with both hands, his eyes gleaming in the dark interior.

"Okay," he said. "Here's what we're gonna do."


	26. The Art of Compromise

House's plan was simplicity itself; Krishna was to create a diversion while House sneaked into the patient's room.

"That's it?" asked Krishna, trying to focus on the cab driver, who kept acquiring a second head.

"That's it."

The cab veered sharply around a garbage truck. Krishna's stomach veered with it, bringing back memories of the tequila House had insisted on teaching him to drink. Salt, shot, lime, repeat. His eyes watering from the agave fumes rising within his troubled interior, Krishna tried to stay with the conversation. "What kind of diversion?"

"You'll think of something," House assured him.

As it turned out, the only thing Krishna could think of to do was to fall out of the elevator and lie on the floor gurgling a little. It was enough: the entire night staff rushed to assist him, scooping him onto a gurney and hurrying him to an empty room for rehydration and monitoring. Being young and very cute with big brown eyes and good manners is no guarantee that people will drop everything to help you in times of trouble, but it doesn't hurt. When House arrived in a separate elevator minutes later, the coast was clear.

He made his almost silent way to the patient's room, pausing once to disengage himself from a magazine rack that tipped over with a crash. No one came out to investigate; the staff was too busy laughing at poor Krishna, who was trying to explain what he was doing there at that hour.

House entered the patient's room unobserved, locked the door, and swiftly disabled the call button and telephone. Then he positioned himself at the end of the bed, steadied himself with one hand on the footboard, and called the patient's name. It was not his intention to look or sound menacing, but in the dim light the effect was sepulchral. The patient's eyes flew open and his face turned ashen.

"You!" he aspirated. "What're you doing here?" He fumbled for the call button, saw it was unlit; reached for the phone, noted the plug dangling in House's raised hand. The patient settled back into his pillows and drew the blankets up around his chest. He said, with more distaste than fear, "Jeeziz, you look like death on toast standing there. I almost shit myself!"

"The time has come to speak frankly," House informed him pompously. "The time for evasion is past." The patient turned on the light and stared at his face.

"What the hell happened to you?" he demanded. "Did you set a broken arm and accuse the patient of trying to fist-fuck a water buffalo?"

"That's funny," House said, belching gently. "The fact is, I was assaulted by a cowboy at Brokeback Mountin'. He apologized profusely and he bought me a drink."

"More like twenty of them. You're drunk!"

"And you, Mr. Director, have VD," said House, trying to sound Churchillian. "But tomorrow, I shall be sober." He hiccuped, and swayed a little.

"That's impossible," the patient snapped.

"How do you know?"

"The, the test results. Came back negative."

"You don't know that yet," House informed him owlishly. "Whitbred won't tell you the results for another six hours at least."

The director rubbed his forehead.

"Anyway, I'm over boring, ordinary STDs like herpes," House said dismissively. "My bright young associate has come up with one I like even better: Lymphogranuloma venereum."

"Nympho what?"

"LYMpho. Granuloma. Venereum. You may call it LGV for short. Allow me to enlighten you. LGV is a sexually-transmitted disease caused by the _Chlamydia trachomatis_ bacteria. It usually starts with a painless sore on the genitals, like the one I found on you this morning. After a couple days, couple weeks, it spreads to the lymph nodes in the groin, and they start to swell, like the swelling I found this morning. Couple more days and they might start rupturing and draining. Then they'll heal. Then they'll swell up, rupture, and drain again, and so on. Nasty business all around. And, of course, the same thing'll be happening to the person who infected you." He stopped himself. "Why are you so sure the syph and herpes tests are negative?"

The director stared at the ceiling. "Because we all got tested first."

"We?"

"Me. My wife. Rico. Clap, syph, herpes, AIDS, the whole nine yards. My own private doctor did all the tests. They were all clear."

"Did your doctor test for LGV?"

The patient shook his head. "This is the first I've ever heard of it."

House hobbled over to a bedside chair and sat down. He reached into his pocket for the prescription bottle, took a pill, and offered one to the patient. It took two glasses of water and a lot of choking and coughing before he managed to get it down, and he gaped as House swallowed his dry.

The two men sat for a moment, lost in their own thoughts. Then House said, heavily, "I'm surprised your doctor didn't think to test for this. It's pretty rare up here, but where Rico's from it's as common as mango trees." He bounced his cane on its rubber tip a few times. Then: "You knew about the affair right from the start—and you even had everybody tested on your dime?"

The patient declined to meet his eyes, but he smiled. "Pathetic, isn't it? Sad old fart, married to a woman half his age, sells out his manhood to keep her from walking away. That's what everyone would say, isn't it? Everyone knows that when someone cheats on you, you're supposed to stop loving them. Cut them out of your life forever.

"I spent the first two thirds of my life listening to what everyone else said about love and never stopping to ask myself what I thought. I was told I should want passion and mutual respect. I was told I should demand compatibility and excitement. I was told to hold out for a woman who would make me the center of her universe, but to watch out for golddiggers. I'm a perfectionist in my work and I was a perfectionist in romance, and I drove myself and a lot of women crazy trying to put all of those things into one package, and I never managed to do it. Well, no shit. Who can meet all of those criteria?"

He paused for a moment. "What was that pill I took?" he wondered. "I feel like I should be sitting in an ashram somewhere talking about the Great All."

"It won't hurt you," House said in a muffled voice. "You were saying?"

The patient paused again to relocate his train of thought. He continued, dreamily, "I was told fidelity was non-negotiable. And I was told love was one area of live where I shouldn't compromise. You know what I finally figured out? Love is nothing if not compromise. You give up this to get that—it's simple. If you really value what the other person has to offer, you do what you can to keep them around. Compromise isn't a moral failing, it's a gift you give yourself.

"My wife is a gift I gave to myself. I wasn't an idiot. I was 35 years older than her when we fell in love, and I was already in my fifties then. I knew I was going to slow down sexually as time went on. Maybe a sensible person would have stopped it right there. Why let yourself in for pain? But I loved my wife. And she loved me. What we had was worth taking a chance for. Now she's 35, a young woman at her sexual peak. I'm 70, and even if I could do it every other night, I wouldn't really want to. It's just not that important to me anymore. When she told me she was attracted to Rico, I knew I was supposed to be heartsick, but I wasn't. I was happy for her. All I asked is that we made sure we didn't pass anything around. So much for the scientific approach.

"We're still happy. We may not stay happy, but nothing lasts forever, and in the meantime we've got a good life together. Everyone says 'What about commitment? What about trust? What about your marriage vows?' Fuck everyone. Let 'em screw up their own lives with that kind of thinking, but don't let 'em use it to screw up yours."

House sat so still, his chin propped on his hands, that the patient turned to him in amusement. "Did you pass out over there?"

"No," said House, shaking himself a little. "I'm listening."

"So tell me," the patient said, "this LVG; is it treatable?"

"Easily," said House, and outlined the tests that would be run and the course of antibiotics that everyone would have to take. With any luck and some modifications in dosage, it would also treat the patient's meningitis. From there, the challenge would be to restore his bladder to normal functioning.

"There's surgery as a last resort, but I'm hoping the nerve damage has been minimal enough to avoid it," he said. "You might get away with simple bladder training, where you learn to control the muscles yourself. If you still need some help, there's a class of drugs called anticholinergics, and an antidepressant called Trofranil, that relax the muscles and prevent spasms. Of course, like any drug they come with possible side effects: fatigue, dry mouth, dizziness, blurred vision, nausea..."

At long last, the patient laughed. "Sounds like a typical afternoon to me," he said.

-0-

Dr. Whitbred almost managed to hide the shock he felt when he entered the patient's room later that morning to find House sacked out in a recliner, snoring lightly, his hat pulled over his eyes. The patient was finishing his breakfast and chatting amiably with his wife, who sat serenely by his bed, holding his hand. A moment later Krishna appeared, looking rumpled and apprehensive, dark circles under his eyes.

"Good morning, Doctor," the patient saluted Whitbred with half a bagel and a glass of milk. "Dr. House! Dr. Whitbred is here. Tell him what we decided."

House roused himself and offered a groggy, unsparing account of the circumstances that led to the patient's illness and the treatments needed to remedy it. Whitbred quickly acceded; less, Krishna felt, out of respect for Dr. House's expertise and more out of a sincere desire to see him leave for Princeton on the earliest train possible. By afternoon, thanks to the hospital's advanced testing capabilities ("You guys could almost do something with all this," was House's awed appraisal after a tour and demonstration), the diagnosis of LGV was confirmed for all three parties and treatment begun.

Heartened by the prospect of being home in time for dinner, House decided to celebrate Krishna's contribution to the diagnosis by blowing his per diem on a lavish lunch at an uptown restaurant. They shuffled in—underslept, whiskery, a little hung over—and to Krishna's surprise, were actually seated, albeit in a dark corner in the back. Drinks were brought. ("It'll cure you or kill you," toasted House, as Krishna sipped nervously at his first Long Island iced tea.) Their waiter, a Broadway aspirant if there ever was one, sallied forth with menus and a long list of bewildering specials, delivered with a hair too much theatricality. House cut him short.

"We're here for the gnocchi with rabbit sausage," he growled, swinging his face around so the waiter got the full effect of his bruised face. "And don't take all day." The waiter stowed his acting chops and skedaddled.

They talked about the patient's prognosis. "His options are exercises, drugs, or surgery?" asked Krishna.

"There's another route," said House, "but it involves stimulating the nerves with an electrical wire up his tailpipe. I'll let Dr. Ruth tell him about it, if it comes to that."

"Dr. Ruth may not have heard of this method," Krishna said doubtfully. The iced tea was starting to loosen his tongue. Fearing he had been indiscreet, he added quickly, "but she has been seeing a great deal of the new neurologist lately, so perhaps he will tell her about it."

"Pillow talk?" asked House, with unseemly interest. "Do they disappear into the utility room from time to time and come out with each other's lab coats on?"

"I worry about the anti-depressants," deflected Krishna. "It would be wonderful if they helped him with his physical problem. But what if they 'cure' him of the very mental qualities that make him such an insightful commentator on the human condition?"

"What do you mean?" asked House. Any member of his team would have registered a note of danger in his tone, but Krishna was floating on a warm tide of midday alcohol and didn't notice.

"Well, like Van Gogh, you see," he explained happily. "Suppose he had been 'cured' of his mental illness. Would we have his sunflowers? His night skies? The hallucinogenic colors, the dream-like settings? If we 'cure' our patient's depression—for surely he suffers from depression—will he ever make another movie as great as his last one?"

"Is misery a necessary component of genius?" House slashed back. "Have you ever dropped acid, Krish? Got any idea what it feels like to come unhinged, to hear angels ordering you to bash your brains out? Don't glamorize mental illness, boy. Van Gogh took a razor and cut off his own ear. Think about the kind of cerebral overload that leads to self-butchery. No one should have to suffer like that just so the rest of us can look at an edgy painting and feel good about how discerning we are." He stabbed and ate a gnocchi with ferocious energy. "Van Gogh produced those paintings in spite of schizophrenia and bipolarism," he added. "If he'd been treated, he might have produced even greater works of art—why doesn't anyone ever mention that?"

Chagrined, Krishna finished his meal in silence.

House was waiting for his receipt when he brought up the topic Krishna had really wanted to hear about; the possibility of a fellowship at Princeton Plainsboro.

"I'm gonna fill a couple of openings in the next six months," he said casually. "What're your plans?"

"I am very interested in immunology," Krishna said, his heart pounding.

"No fooling? Well, give me a call if you're in the neighborhood." House flipped him a somewhat battered business card. "I gotta go if I'm gonna catch my train. Take care of the tip, will ya?" And he was gone, leaving Krishna to settle with the vexed thespian waiter.

-0-

In his room at New York-Presbytarian, the patient asked his wife for a legal pad. She obliged, and he started to write: "Dr. Geoffrey Haus. Tall, stooped, walks with cane/limp. Acerbic, obnoxious, insightful, knows medicine, clueless about people. Called upon to consult in case of patient with mystery infection, much-younger wife." The words came effortlessly, almost as if the character was inventing himself.

-0-

Being late for work was a House specialty, and he outdid himself the next morning, lolling in bed an additional hour just to add an extra wrinkle to Cuddy's forehead. When he finally made an appearance, he went straight to Pediatrics, a crumpled brown paper bag in hand.

Angie was curled up in bed with Nate, watching _A Fish Called Wanda_. House remembered a time when he could intertwine his limbs with those of another person and not lose circulation to his extremities, and concluded that teenaged bones start out soft and pliable and harden with age. He and Carolyn used to share a twin bed and sleep all night without bruising each other—how else can you explain that?

He offered Angie the bag. She peeked inside and squealed with joy. "Sweet!" It was a Rastafarian hat knit of red, green, and yellow wool, with long black wool dreadlocks sewn two-thirds of the way around the rim, purchased from a street vendor in the Village. Angie put it on at once and skanked to Nate's admiring cries.

Carolyn appeared in the doorway and took in her daughter's new look. "You should wear that to Grandma Barton's at Christmas," she said. "Tell her it's a dreadlock holiday."

Still smiling, Carolyn turned to House. "What have you been doing with yourself all week?" she asked. "You just disappeared. Dr. Wilson said you were in New York on a top-secret mission, so naturally we've been speculating wildly."

"Can't talk about it," House told her, as they moved into the hallway. "It's a secret. How did your week go?" Did you sleep with Scott? he wanted to ask, but he suddenly remembered Krishna--"Why do you always lead with your mouth?"—and made a momentous decision: he would let one go by. It was an uncomfortable, unfamiliar sensation to have a pressing question and not ask it, but he managed.

Carolyn was staring at his face. "No one guessed that you were fighting crime or boxing," she said. "Maybe we should have been more imaginative."

"You know New York," said House. "It's a nice place to visit, but you gotta watch out for the crosscut. Where's Scott?"

Carolyn checked her watch. "As of this moment, he is leaving New Jersey airspace." She did a little shuffling dance. "He got called back to Seattle. And not a moment too soon."

"He got on your nerves?"

"He got on everyone's nerves. My nerves, Angie's nerves, Dr. Wilson's nerves, the nurses' nerves, the orderlies' nerves. Angie finally ordered him to go—she promised he could come back when she was too sick to fight with him. Poor Scott; he has this nervous habit of pissing people off."

House reached into his pocket. "I have something for you, too." He handed her a menu from New York-Presbytarian Hospital.

She took it, puzzled, until she noticed writing on the back. "To Carolyn, who must have nerves of steel and the patience of a saint." It was signed by the patient.

Carolyn stared at House, wide-eyed, open-mouthed.

"No way," she breathed.

"Way."

"I don't believe it!" She reread the message, took a closer look at House. "You did cure him, right?" He nodded, and she flung her arms around his neck, almost knocking him off his feet. "Greg! You lunatic! I can't believe you actually took care of—and asked for his autograph! For me!" She disengaged herself and hurried into Angie's room, calling, "Angie! You won't believe this!"

House heard Angie's shout of disbelief; heard Nate add his congratulations; heard Carolyn reiterate her history of devotion to the master and all his works. He stood staring down at the tip of his cane, a pleased half-smile on his sore and lumpy face.

He wasn't sure what he wanted to do next. He trusted it would become clearer with time.

THE END


End file.
